Directed by Shinji Aoyama, EM Embalming follows Miyaki Murakami (Reiko Takashima), an embalmer — did you guess from the title? — who assists Detective Hiroka (Yutaka Matsushige) in investigating the suicide of Yoshiko Shindo, the son of a local politician. Yoshiko has jumped to his death from a building. To aid in the investigation, Reiko begins the process of reassembling Yoshiko’s body for preservation. However, she is cautioned by a priest (Kojiro Hongo) that her work is considered evil, and that embalming bodies is a sin.

As the story unfolds, the head of the deceased boy is stolen, and suspicion falls on his girlfriend (Hitomi Miwa) as the alleged thief. But soon, Miyaki discovers that Dr. Fuji (Toshio Shiba), who operates an operating room in the back of a large truck and was also the man who embalmed her mother, is involved in harvesting corpses and selling body parts on the black market.

In Japan, embalming is not as commonplace as in the United States. Miyaki’s skills transform her into an artist, even if her craft is gruesome. The film does not shy away from blood and gore, rapidly shifting between detective work and horror, which aligns it with the Giallo genre. And yes, the pun is intentional—there’s abundant blood.

The film’s narrative is scattered; it moves slowly, intertwining themes of incest and grief within its complex storyline. Yet unlike so many movies made in the J-horror boom, it doesn’t want to be the next anything. It wants to be itself, a strange, headless, desiccated mess of a film.