Japanese Horror

[St. Ajora]

This is a topic I hardly know anything about, and it intrigues me quite a bit. While wiki surfing yesterday (come on, you know you've all been caught up in wikipedia before) I came to stumble upon the horror genre which led me to the grudge, which led me to japanese horror. I had only really heard of it through mentioning by Blackjack, I believe, so when I read what little articles were there, I was HORRIFIED. Especially by some of the covers of the dvds.

What ever possesses someone to make stuff like that? What ever possesses someone to WATCH it? I understand the whole pyschological factor, but at the end of the day, can't a person get their thrills by watching some good old romantic chick flicks? I just don't understand that type of content and why someone would derive enjoyment from it. And it opens up a whole new...what if scenario, regarding snuff films, but I really hope that's just urban legend talking.

Sooo...does anyone know the dealio here? Can someone explain the situation or point me to more informative articles for me to read about?

[Yohn]

I'm personally fond of Japanese horror because it's something that I've never, ever seen before. Most of the American stuff has become rather droll and uninteresting (there have, of course, been a few exceptions) and the Japanese view things in such a different way than we do.

I've been reading a lot of the Japanese horror novels as of late, and I love them dearly. ^_^
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"And as the lion slaughters man, I am the wolf and you're the lamb." ~Blind Guardian

[Axiose]

The two spookiest Japanese horrors I've ever watched would be Audition and Perfect Blue (an anime movie). The later one uses music quite eerily which gives quite a disturbing result in places. The former is just disturbing, well the ending is at least.

I'm a much greater fan of asian horror movies (I buy a lot of Tartan Asia Extreme/Tartan Extreme/Tartan Asia) and being slightly one sided that I am, I'm leaning more to Korean horror movies at the moment. R-point being certainly a weird one to watch as well as Into The Mirror, which isn't so much scary as it is freaky - makes me take a second look in the mirror in the morning. A Tale of Two Sisters is just amazing - that is a horror movie I would recommend watching.

It's easy to find Japanese horror movies at the moment though, all you need to do is to find current Hollywood movies they're bringing out and just find the Japanese original (which are usually far superior). Pulse is the most recent movie I can think of that's coming out, though I haven't seen it yet. I watched Dark Water and even though the "little dark haired Japanese girl" is getting overused, the original was much better than the Jennifer Conoley remake.
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[Axiose] [Fliktor]

[Shrew]

Well, I think Japanese Horror has been around for awhile, but it's really catching on because of the influence of anime on the west, the American remakes, and the growing popularity of DVDs and foreign film on them.

I mean, manga has been filled with some disturbing images for a long time, and that grew into anime. While I think anime has tamed down and go on to other things, becoming more commercialized for one, especially TV, since something like Akira, it and manga are really showing their influence in live-action Japanese film. I mean, most of the directors have grown up reading this crazy manga so of course their films are insane.

There also tends to be this sadomasochistic undertone running through alot of it, especially what I've heard of Audition and its ilk. (What I've heard is enough to convince me I don't want to see it, so I could very well be wrong.) That's probably because of the big adult industry in Japan. A lot of screenwriters and directors actually get started doing porn, and then break into mainstream after proving themselves.

Of course, I have a theory that everything strange about Japan can be argued down to the fact that they had an atomic bomb dropped on them.
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Fear our Vagueness.

[Lufia]

Japanese horror seems to be highly popular these days, and I'm not surprised as to why. I guess it's just a whole different vibe of horror; there are no chainsaw murderers chasing you, no psychotic murderers (... okay, so, maybe there are). It's usually something that appears harmless, or a ghost/spirit that is related to your everyday life, ie. mirrors, TVs, girlfriends, water, showers. There aren't really any loud noises that make you jump either, and I guess the horror just sorta'... grinds on you. Ringu had me horrified of my TV for months on end. ._.; It was really funny to see Supernatural's Bloody Mary episode so similar to Ringu in terms of the ghost.

I have to agree with Audition and Perfect Blue being highly disturbing though. ^^; Audition was the first movie that had me sorta shivering for longer than a minute, and it wasn't 'cause it was cold that night. I have a feeling a lot of American horror movies are trying to imitate this sort of horror now; one movie comes to mind... something about static and phone calls and that EMP sorta stuff, but I forget the name.

Hey, atomic bomb theory as to the horror that is the Japanese industry's movies is touchy, but possible!

[Equus]

Well, it can be very easily argued that the atomic bombs and the post-war occupation of Japan had a profound effect on the Japanese culture. I mean, just take a look at Akira Kurosawa's Dreams and the environmental and post-apocalyptic views in it. It's pretty much a given that anyone from that generation in Japan (including Hayao Miyazaki) have some very strong views about things like that.

I'll try to see if I can find any good articles on the genre, I know one of my friends is a big fan. For me, I would say that there is a very big difference between Japanese culture and most western cultures, and their folklore and stories reflect this. My dad kind of jokes about how the typical Japanese folk tale goes like this: poor old farmer loses his wife...poor old farmer meets beautiful woman...beautiful woman ends up being a fox spirit...poor old farmer gets even poorer and then dies....the end.

I'm also not entirely sure I understand why the original poster is so horrified by the genre. Well, it should be scary...that's what it's there for...but what's so wrong about Japanese horror as compared to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Friday the Thirteenth Part Nth Degree or something?
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I can run faster scared than you can mad.

[St. Ajora]

Western horror seems so incredibly tame...I mean, I saw movie advertisements depicting a woman in a group torture ritual about to have her eyeball cut out. That's a bit too extreme for me. And for the record, I dislike slasher horror to begin with, but this stuff is just so much more psychological and brutal.

[Equus]

Granted, that sounds pretty extreme, but so are some of the scenes from "The Exorcist", and I don't think that qualifies as a horror film. My opinion would be that if you look hard enough you're going to find disturbing things in almost any culture. My friend once told me about a scene in a movie that I won't even try to describe here because it was just that wrong, but it involved pipes and rats being used to torture someone. I don't even know if that really even qualifies as "horror" anymore though.

What kind of information about the genre are you looking for? No offense meant, but it sounds as if you've already made up your mind about what it's like in a broad way. I don't think it's peculiar to Japanese horror really, but from what I've seen Japanese horror does tend to rely more on the psychological effect. I guess it's also hard to have any perspective on what you're referring to beyond "Ju-On/The Grudge", which I will grant you was a terribly disturbing film. I can't even really begin to explain why either.
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I can run faster scared than you can mad.

[Tullaryx]

I'm abit new to the site, but ran across this topic and wanted to put out my views on the subject matter.

I find it perpelexing how people would just generally say that Japanese horror is better and scarier than those made in the West. To some degree they are but they also churn out some of the most cliched and derivative horror films of the last decade. I think with the rise in popularity of Japanese gothic horror such as Ringu and Ju-On here in the US was a good thing since it introduced North American audiences to a type of horror that's seem to have disappeared from the Hollywood system: the psychological and ghost horror genre. This also did something which I can't really blame on the Japanese horror industry. It made NA audiences think that this was all that Japanese horror was about. For every Ringu, Ju-On and Ôdishon, we get such films as The Guinea Pig Series and the awful, albeit fun, films such as Junk, Wild Zero and Versus.

Outside of the work being made by Takashi Miike, most Japanese horror now really seem tame in comparison to whats now coming out of other regions, some even from Hollywood. Instead of the PG-13 type of horror that the Japanese gothic style has spawned, we now see a renaissance in the nihilistic, down and dirty exploitation type of films that were popularized during the late 60's, throughout the 70's and into the mid 80's. Miike seems to be the only director from Japan who can actually take the psychological aspect of the very good Japanese horror films and add to it a heavy sense of nihilism and violence that Western audiences eat up. Alexandre Aja, Rob Zombie and Eli Roth (someone that seem to garner derision from critics for some reason) are part of this new wave of new horror directors who know that horror shouldn't be PG-13. Horror should be just that: horror. Whether the horror comes from a mindbending and disturbing tone of the film or just disturbing, violent images, horror is the common denominator in all their films. It just happens that the most well-received Japanese horror seems to go for the former rather than the latter, but it doesn't mean that they're superior to whats being made in the West.
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