In a career that spanned four decades, prolific novelist Shinji Fujiwara explored a wide range of genres in his work, though is most famed for his 1950s suspense stories. The widespread popularity of his work quickly lent itself to the medium of film, and he would eventually be dubbed “film’s favourite novelist” due to the

Continue Reading

The generally agreed definition of a snuff film is a real (not staged) filmed murder. In some cases, it is viewed for the purpose of arousal. However, this is somewhat incorrect, as by this definition, any video depicting the death of a person, purposeful or accidental, can fall under this moniker depending on the viewer.

Continue Reading

Nighty Night: Midnight Nightmares is a 1986 independent Japanese horror anthology, directed by Hirohisa Kokusho. The film was certainly unrecognized upon its initial release, receiving an extremely limited VHS run in Japan but soon faded into obscurity. It wasn’t long before the film was considered lost media, with no known copies of these VHS releases

Continue Reading

My Mother’s Eyes is a 2023 Japanese science fiction psychological thriller, written and directed by Takeshi Kushida. No stranger behind the camera, Kushida is also the creative mind behind the short films FLOW (2003), KANNNON (2004), Reincarnation (2008), I AM A CAMERA (2013), The Earth was Bluish (2015), and VOICE (2018), as well as the

Continue Reading

Science fiction, often preoccupied with technology and artificial beings, can sometimes seem overly intricate, neglecting the mundane facets of life. However, this stereotype is not only unfair but also doesn’t hold true for Junta Yamaguchi’s body of work. From his debut feature, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020)  Yamaguchi has masterfully blended the time travel

Continue Reading

The Ghost Station 2022

The Ghost Station is a 2022 South Korean horror thriller, written and directed by Yong-ki Jeong, with additional writing from Soyoung Lee, c, and Koji Shiraishi. Takahashi and Shiraishi are incredibly well-known in Japanese cinema, working on such horror classics as Ringu (1998) and Noroi (2005) respectively. On the other hand, Yong-ki Jeong has worked

Continue Reading

Higurashi: When They Cry – GOU is a 2-volume psychological horror manga written by Ryukishi07/7th Expansion and illustrated by Tomato Akase. Ryukishi07 is a Japanese author, artist, and representative of the group collective 07th Expansion, who are well-known as the creators of the When They Cry series, consisting of Higurashi When They Cry, Umineko When

Continue Reading

The Summer Hikaru Died is an ongoing (currently at 3-volumes) slice of life/horror Seinen manga, written and illustrated by Mokumokuren. First conceived while Mokumokuren was studying for his exams, the creator later began releasing concept art through his Twitter. Upon seeing this, he was contacted by the editorial department of Young Ace UP, an online

Continue Reading

One of my current hobbies is searching thrift stores for weird, interesting, or hard-to-find DVDs. With streaming networks dominating the distribution channels, and more and more media disappearing from these networks before ever seeing a hard copy release, I feel somewhat like an archivist hunting for treasure. Albeit, this treasure is not found in majestical

Continue Reading

With the turn of a new decade, new opportunities were sought by film studio Daiei. In 1970, Daiei on the verge of bankruptcy, entered into a partnership with fellow struggling studio Nikkatsu, forming Dainichi Eihai. By pooling their resources, the aim was to fight against Toei’s market dominance: by the 1970s Toei had perfected their

Continue Reading