Movie » Japanese Horror Movies

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Among the scariest movies ever put on celluloid like its similarly styled sister RINGU this tale of death-by-curse is nothing short of blood chilling. With chapters named after each subsequent victim it plays like a series of increasingly daunting deadly vignettes. All of the stories surround a haunted house where the evil spirit of a 5-year-old boy still lurks. The first to enter the residence and be cursed is a young hospice worker visiting an elderly client. She finds the boy duct-taped in a closet where he first appears to her in the form of a black cat and then shows his human form which is a shockingly ghoulish white face and blackened eyes. Invisible to all except for those who are next to die his presence seems like a true mystery. But when family members friends curious teenagers and frightened police investigators begin to drop like flies it is clear that his spirit thrives. Perhaps it is the unsolvable problem of the boy's vengeance that makes the premise so terrifying--his anger and his penalty ca

Legend holds that 30 years ago, a suburban town was terrorized by the spirit of a woman whose beautiful face had been grotesquely disfigured by a jealous husband. Roaming the streets wearing a long coat and surgical mask, the spirit would approach her young victims and, while removing the mask, ask if she was pretty. The victim's response would almost always lead to their violent death. Now, one by one, children are disappearing again. As teachers and officials desperately begin to investigate, a panic begins to build as the woman's spirit returns for some unfinished business and the town's dark secrets are exposed.

A simplistic way to describe this creepy, atmospheric entry into the J-horror genre would be to call it Ringu (and its Americanized cousin, The Ring) with computers and the Internet standing in for telephones and videotape. Pulse certainly has the right credentials of psychological drama and existential technique to make it a standout of the scary style that has made this variety of Asian film so popular worldwide. The mysterious ambiance is heightened by several intersecting stories that outwardly have little connection and add up to a real head-scratcher of an ending. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa brings a consistently enigmatic touch to the disturbing plot threads. One of them concerns a young man who starts seeing strange onscreen images that appear to be ghosts trapped in his new computer. Being somewhat technologically illiterate he enlists a woman at the local university to help him interpret the bizarre visual messages he receives. The vibe becomes increasingly more unsettling, especially as his modem starts connecting itself to the Internet for communication from beings that seem to be trapped, unable to do anything but mumble chilling pleas for help. Startling suicides, shadowy smudges of human forms that appear on walls, rooms sealed with red masking tape that are opened to reveal unseen terrors, and deserted backstreets of a noir-tinged Tokyo are just some of the thematic images that make Pulse such a spooky, unanswerable entry into the world of first-rate J-horror classics. --Ted Fry

Exactly one week after staying at a remote cabin a group of Japanese teenagers all meet sudden inexplicable deaths. A cousin of one of the victims reporter Reiko Asakawa Nanako Matsushima begins an investigation that leads to the discovery of a videotape containing hauntingly bizarre footage. Upon viewing the tape Reiko receives a phone call stating that she too will die in one week. As the clock ticks away Reiko enlists the help of her estranged husband Ryuji Hiroyuki Sanada who possesses limited psychic abilities. Together they attempt to discover the meaning behind the cryptic film and break the supernatural curse. Hideo Nakata's RING based on a novel by Kji Suzuki was such a hit in Japan that it spawned both a sequel and prequel along with a huge cult following. Like a horrific version of an X-FILES episode the dark moody film makes the most out of the mysterious and the unknown. As any viewer will admit the surreal death-inducing video presented within the movie is extremely effective. And as RING's tens

No one loses their mind instantly ? Sanity seeps away one drop at a time. Yoshimi simply wanted a better life ? for both herself and her daughter Ikuko. Unfortunately, such wishes may sometimes be hard to come by. The custody battle has grown embittered and hurtful, her new job is less than desirable, and Ikuko?s schoolwork has taken a turn for the worse. But, Yoshimi has something bigger to worry about. Something upstairs. Something cold and dank. Something that should have never been.

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(Masuoka Shinya Tsukamoto, director of Tetsuo) is a cameraman possessed by the craving to understand fear. In particular, he obsesses over his footage of a grisly suicide in the subway. Returning to the scene to better comprehend the dead man's reasoning, he opens a doorway into a bizarre, cavernous underworld. Here among the ghosts and subterranean creatures he finds a beautiful, mute girl whom he takes home. As days pass he begins to suspect there is something truly inhuman about this girl. When he begins to uncover her horrifying secrets, Masuoka realizes that he has found the key to gaining the terrible knowledge he so craves...

Shinya Tsukamoto draws on the marriage of flesh and technology that inspires so much of David Cronenberg's work and then twists it into a manga-influenced cyberpunk vision. A man (Tomoroh Taguchi) awakens from a nightmare in which his body is helplessly fusing with the metal objects around him, only to find it happening to him in real life... or is it? Haunted by memories of a hit and run (eerily prophetic of Cronenberg's Crash), the man knows this ordeal could be a dream, a fantastic form of divine retribution, or perhaps technological mutation born of guilt and rage. Shot in bracing black and white on a small budget, Tsukamoto puts a demented conceptual twist on good old-fashioned stop-motion effects and simple wire work, giving his film the surreal quality of a waking dream with a psychosexual edge (resulting in the film's most disturbing scene). The story ultimately takes on an abstract quality enhanced by the grungy look and increasingly wild images as they take to the streets in a mad chase of technological speed demons. This first entry in his self-titled "Regular Sized Monster Series" is followed by a full-color sequel, Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer, which trades the muddy experimental atmosphere for a big-budget sheen but can't top the cybershock to the system this movie packs. --Sean Axmaker