Tag

Ringu

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No Sleep Til Tokyo: American Reboots of J-Horror Classics… and their sequels

Back again this month with more j-horror films to trigger latent fears of technology: video cassette tapes, cell phones, cameras, the internet... nothing is sacred. Nothing is safe. Sure, we're accustomed to haunted houses -- that's old hat -- but a possessed eyeball?! Okay, okay... so maybe not so much a possessed eyeball, but at least an organ that let's you see into the spirit world. One of the most fun conventions of j-horror is that it often uses everyday objects and turns them into vessels for terror. The films in this list, excepting Godzilla, all cater[...]

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No Sleep till Tokyo: Essential J-Horror Films you shouldn’t watch alone

Everyone's got their thing: for some people it's slasher movies, for others it's creepy-looking revenge spirits. I fall into the latter category. Given that it's j-horror month, I'd like to celebrate by re-introducing a few of my favourite horror movies that deal with yurei. Even if you've never heard the word "yurei" before, you'd probably know one if you saw one: the white shoudlike dress, the long, matted black hair, and the penchant for indiscriminately killing anything and everything they come in contact with after a certain amount of time. It's a very parti[...]

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The Vengeful Spirits of Japan

We horror writers are made of sturdier stock than most, right? We can handle a good scare without much psychological scarring. I think? Maybe? This is the lie I usually tell myself as I pop in another horror movie: "I can handle it." Telling myself that "I could handle it," I sat down for the first time to watch a series of Japanese horror films that basically destroyed my sleeping patterns for a the few following months. I bought a nightlight. I developed a habit of dashing from the bathroom, which is three feet away from my bedroom, once I'd shut off the ligh[...]