After many years of terrible pop scare and cheap gag horror films, its time to look back and truly understand the birth of this beautiful genre. Some of the best horror films were getting made several years before Japan or China took from us, we were making movies like Night of the Living dead by George Romero, and Alien by Ridley Scott. Most of these stories were driven by pure fear and had a lot to do with what was being influenced at the time in modern culture. Alien for example, was around the time of the Vietnam War where we knew we weren’t winning and most people were against us being over there. Now this is a stretch, but I believe Alien had a lot to do with this fear of something we cant escape and is going to kill us eventually. The reason Alien was so terrifying was solely based around the fact that we couldn’t win, and escaping is impossible. Anyways, the movies America was making at this time were heavily influencing the Japanese into making films like, the Grudge, The Ring, and Pulse.
After this weeks work, I can safely say Japanese horror is terrifying, they have taken our means of horror and totally manipulated it into something we would never do. They take the psychological side of horror where the unknown is our worst fear. In the movie Pulse there is a scene where the main character is found wondering around the city trying to get answers about this place that is the forbidden room, most people in their right minds would find this terrifying, but he continues on and finds a door with red tape all the way around the door. He is mystified about this door and something tells him to open it, when he gets inside he walks down these stairs, and walks down a long hallway where at the end there is a couch and mural with bright red marks are all over it. He is confused and turns around to leave and sees a figure at the end of the hallway where he walked from. He panics and jumps behind the couch before the figure makes it to him. He is looking from underneath the couch and we see nothing until the very end when the face starts to slowly lean over the couch and it cuts to the next scene! That seems to be very stereotypical of Japanese horror though. Darkness covering the beast and we aren’t allowed to fully understand it. I think that makes the story a lot more suspenseful and terrifying, where most American horror films are scary based off jump scares, gore, violence, and cheap storytelling.
To say the least Japanese Horror has truly inspired me, I love the whole world of literature and media and highly recommend others to read further into the folklore of the creatures they show in their story telling.
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