For about five years during the late 90s and early 2000s
A surge of Japanese horror films took the world by storm
Even if you never watch a single foreign horror film
Names like The RIng and The Grudge should still sound familiar
I want to spend some time introducing these films to you
And for those who are already familiar with the films
I want to dig just a bit deeper
And talk about a sad current state of J-horror
Welcome to my two-part retrospective
On Japanese horror films
It goes without saying that
Japan had make horror films before the late 90s
Old classics like Onbibaba
Sinners of Hell
And Kwaidan and all came out in the 60s
Which I'll call the folk horror cycle
That's what Asian horror films usually are
Adaptations of familiar folktale and folk characters
Not too dissimilar from Gothic Horrors in the West
"I am Dracula"
There all changed in 1998
With the release of little film called...
Ringu
It's a film about a single mother
who discovered a cursed videotape
A tape that kills you in 7 days
If you watched it
Chasing clues after clues
The mother slowly discovers the disturbing truth behind the curse
And so, gone are the traditional folk horror stories
Ringu focuses on the fear in the modern society
Technophobia
Curse in a VHS
Ghostly calls from the phone
Raging spirits climbing out of a TV
Everything has a tie the technology of some form
Even the curse itself is very mechanical
When you watch the curse tape
You get a phone call
And after seven days you die
The curse has no personality
And cannot be reasoned with
it's cold and unfeeling
A clockwork of a curse
It's almost like cosmic horror
Gone is the familiar stories and characters
Audience has to watch an ordinary single mother
Struggling to fight a force
No one can understand
And with that
the image of Ringu is forever etched into our collective memories
Overnight, everybody wants to be just like Ringu
The image of Sadako becomes synonymous with the J-horror genre
It spawned countless sequels
A U.S. remake
And even a South Korean remake
To this day, I think Ringu is one of the best horror films ever made
If you never watched it
Or only saw the remake
Give it a go
Two years later, in the year 2000
Ju-On was released
But not the one you heard about
This is Ju-On: the curse
A direct-to-video movie
The actual start of the Ju-On series
Not counting the short film that came before
The plot centers around a cursed house
And several groups of people who enters the home for various reasons
But this is not a haunted house
Much right Ringu
The home is just a contact point
Once you come in contact with the curse
It'll follow you
And its only goal is to kill you
What makes this film different from Ringu is its nonlinear structure
The audience are giving a God's eye view to see the events unfold
You never know each character is too well
You can't quite piece the entire narrative together
Not at first viewing
It's cold and puzzling
Like staring into the inner working of a complex machine
A perfect cinematic form
For the type of horror established in Ringu
All segments lack decisive conclusions
Which further pushes the cosmic horror angle
And the grimy video footage
Only adds to the horror atmosphere
Perfect for a midnight viewing
Like Ringu, it spawned way to many sequels
Including the more famous theatrical sequel
Ju-On: The Grudge
which also has a U.S. remake
If you are new to the Ju-On series and don't know where to start
Most people will recommend Ju-On: The Grudge
I'd say start with this one
You can't beat the original
With the release of Ju-On
The horror craze was at its height
Japan was producing so many horror films by then
I can't possibly talk about all of them
So for 2001
I want to talk about the two higher-profile films
First one
Kairo
Also known as Pulse
It's about a computer virus that can make you lose the will to live
Either cause you to fade into dust
Or commit suicide
Instead of giving cryptic explanations for the cause of this curse
this time around, there is only speculations
Told in two parallel stories that converge at the end
It takes the ideas set by Ringu and Ju-On
And dials it up to eleven
But the part that makes Kairo a true continuation of the genre
Is how technophobia is front and center this time around
Around this time, Japan was experiencing the Internet boom
Just a few short years after this film's release
Over half of Japanese household will have internet connections
With that comes the birth of the "hikikomori" culture
A generation of youth who live almost exclusively online
And have extreme social withdrawal
People who never left their home
Months, if not years at a time
In the film there are multiple dramatic monologues
Discussing the effects of the internet on us
And a hellscape showing us what happens
If we are sunk into that cursed place
For that reason, not only is this film terrifying
It's depressing
And depression seems to be the theme in 2001
because the same year saw the release of the cult classic
Suicide Club
Unlike Kairo which begins with a shocking and depressing suicide imagery
Suicide Club begins with a symphony of mass suicide
Over-the-top and absurd
It crosses the disturbing barrier
And becomes kind of hilarious
Not to mention the scene is followed
By a youth pop-group performance
That's not to say the film doesn't have well-crafted moments of suspense
The film follows a series of seemingly contagious suicide
People end their lives without warnings or motivations
And the world at large doesn't seem to care about epidemic
If you think this has something to do with the society of Japan at a time
You'll be right
In the 90s, Japan saw rise in suicide rate
And the film seems to suggest that society at large
Doesn't take this issue very seriously
The film even confronts the people who have thoughts of death
But just like Kairo
The film ultimately doesn't offer any clear answers
No explanations on why the epidemic happened
Not even speculations this time
the world simply has a glitch
It's a rather unsettling notion that the world is a giant machine
And it can go wrong at the will of an invisible force
And a glitch spreads yourself room, what else
Another form of technology
But that goes into spoiler territory
So I was stopped right here
Both Kairo and Suicide Club clearly belongs to the lineage of the J-horror genre
But unlike RIngu and Ju-On
These two films feel much more artsy
the filmmakers took advantage of the audience longing for horror
And showed us real horror
Forcing us to confront the disturbing side of society
The social issues
With that, we reached, what I consider, the peak of the J-horror genre
We saw how Ringu breaks the tradition
And brings the genre into a modern age
How Ju-On further refines the ground rules for supernatural horror
Established an expected tone for the genre
How Kairo and Suicide Club elevated genre by incorporating social commentaries
Next, a familiar face will return
And takes the genre into a new direction
Tune in next time, where we will talk about the remaining horror films
as well as other craps that followed