A demon's arm falls from the trees. By the time you understand what that arm means, the film has already severed something inside you that doesn't grow back. Oni trades jump scares for the kind of horror that lives in blood relation and duty, where the real monstrosity isn't the thing in the forest, it's the choice waiting at home. This hits hardest if you've ever had to protect someone you love while knowing protection might destroy them both.

Two brothers who live in a hut with their elderly, ailing mother head into the mountains to hunt deer, slipping quietly through the forest to set their traps. When a demon's arm reaches down from the treetops and grabs the younger brother, the older one steadies his trembling hands and looses an arrow. The shot tears the arm away and frees his brother. The severed limb they are left holding seems strangely familiar, and a terrible discovery awaits them when they return home. Kawamoto Kihachirou's stop-motion puppet film draws on an early medieval Japanese legend and plays as a supernatural psychodrama, one that won prizes at numerous animation festivals.