Tag: J-Horror
The curse of endless sequels has plagued horror films for years with multifarious results. The Ringu series kicked off back in the late 90s and is no exception to this curse. With the previous effort in the series, Sadako (2019), seemingly failing to meet fan expectations—high expectations that were set by the involvement of Hideo
If someone from ten years ago told me that I would one day be able to find Junji Ito merchandise at even some of the biggest chain stores, I might not have believed them. Even now, I’m astounded each time I enter my car and see the Tomie air freshener that my niece got me.
After File 01 went off with a bang, Koji Shiraishi’s Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi! File 02: Shivering Ghost (2012) tries something different and turns out unexpectedly good. The first episode of the mockumentary series didn’t disappoint in serving Koji’s found footage brands and Japanese myth goodness, showing how his knack for storytelling and genre
There is something about bad media that can be extremely attractive in some cases. Why The Room is still revered while The Exorcist II is panned? This fine line between so-good-it-is-bad and please-kill-it-with-fire-bad is still baffling. Maybe because we have always tried to make sense of this oddity, we end up being drawn to absolute
Audition (1999) is the scariest movie of all time. I say that without hesitation or hyperbole. No other director is as effective with their imagery as Takashi Miike is here, and no other film elicits fright as consistently on a tenth viewing as the first. The film is a delightful descent into madness executed nigh
It’s understandable why Japanese filmmakers focus so often on the feudal era in their horror cinema. It’s a setting so naturally horrific in the plight and pain of the peasant class that few supernatural elements are necessary to invoke dread in audiences. The stark reality of daily life alone is enough to make the viewer
It has now been 24 hours since I watched Pulse (2001), and I still find myself at a loss. It was a movie that I desperately wanted to enjoy, a cardinal sin for a reviewer who should go in with a blank slate and little expectations. The weight of preconceived notions can hang about the
Saiko no Sutoka (Hepburn: Psycho Stalker) is a survival horror game created by independent Indonesian developer Habupain for PC. The story follows a teenage schoolboy named Akira as he finds himself trapped inside his school with his recent ex-girlfriend—a murderous yandere girl named Saiko-chan—as she tries to apprehend and kill the player. The main objective
While the 1980s was a fairly lacklustre era for Japanese genre cinema on the major studio front, it was quite an exciting time on the independent scene. A whole new generation of filmmakers — emboldened by available 16mm cameras (the novel home video distribution format) and a robust economy — burst onto the scene, pushing
The sixth-generation era of video games is often regarded as the pinnacle of survival horror, having granted us titles such as Silent Hill 2, Fatal Frame, Forbidden Siren, and the more obscure but sometimes equally adored Ku-On. These games were perhaps just as seminal in bringing a newfound fan base to Japanese horror as the