Festival Thread: Modern Asian Horror

Ok, this thread is still in progress. I'll be updating over the next week until it is finished. However, here is a sample list of what is going to be presented:

Asian Horror in the Modern Era
Panel Discussion: Shutter (Korea) and Dark Water (Japan)
Reviews, Comments and Discussions on:

Ju-On: The Grudge
Ju-On: The Grudge 2
Ringu
Rasen (a.k.a. Ring 2: Spiral)
Ringu 2
Ringu 0: Bâsudei
A Tale of Two Sisters
Dark Water
Versus
Audition
The Eye
The Eye 2
The Twins Effect
Kairo
Bio-Zombie
Shutter
Whsipering Corridors
Whsipering Corridors 2
Whsipering Corridors 3
Hiruko - The Goblin
Evil Dead Trap
Bunman: The Untold Story
Infection
Premonition
Uzumaki
One Missed Call
The Unborn

An Investigation Into a Stereotype: The Asian Schoolgirl as a Villian

Select Synopsis:

Ju-On Franchise

This is a complex franchise featuring the following films:

Ju-on (2000), also known as Ju-On: The Curse

Jealous of his wifes love for another man, a teacher from her high school, a man brutally kills his wife and young son. Searching for the son who has missed a lot of school, the teacher enters their house, only to find the dead ghost of his mother, and consequently has a heart attack and becomes a ghost himself. The story goes on to tell of the new tenants of the house and what they experience, and an investigation by two police officers into why so many people are dissapearing.

Ju-on 2 (2000)

N/A

Ju-on: The Grudge (2003)

An evil curse and vengeful spirits seem to linger upon a house where the horrific murder of a woman and child took place and anyone who sets foot inside the house is marked for a terrifying haunting which will not rest. One by one, those who have been tainted by the house begin to die, and nowhere is safe.

Ju-on: The Grudge 2 (2003)

N/A

Ju-On: The Grudge 3 (2005)

The deadly curse continues to manifest itself in this fifth and final instalment in the 'Ju-on' series.

Whispering Corridors Franchise...

Yeogo Goedam (Whispering Corridors)



After a teacher, Mrs. Park, is found dead from apparent suicide at the Korean girls school where she works, teachers try to squelch rumors and disparaging remarks that might sully Mrs. Park's reputation. But it's long been rumored that the school has a ghost, and after a young replacement teacher, Eun-young, arrives, both rumors and strange occurrences gradually increase until more lives are threatened and a mystery is revealed.

Yeogo Goedam II (Whispering Corridors II: Remember the Dead)


Min-Ah finds a strange diary, capable of arousing hallucinations, kept by two of her senior fellow-students, Hyo-Shin and Shi-Eun, who seem to have an unusually close bond. But Hyo-Shin suddenly kills herself, for no obvious reason, and the entire school is shocked and depressed. Min-Ah, however, starts to feel different. It's almost as if she's somehow possessed by the dead girl...

Yeogo Goedam 3: Yeowoo Gyedan (Whispering Corridors III: Wishing Stairs)

Two friends at art college studying ballet find themselves competing for a single placement to go to a dance school in Russia. An urban legend about the staircase heading towards the dormitory building says that if you go up all twenty-eight steps and find a twenty-ninth, then you can ask for a wish to be granted and Yun Ji-seong knows just what she wants to wish for. But unknown to her, the wishing stairs have consequences, and she's about to find out the hard way.

I'll watch Shutter when this starts, Jeff.

First of all, are these threads open to the 'public' before the official start of the festival?

If not, someone can deleted this post (or l will, if lm allowed...dont know)

Dont wanna comment any further until that's answered. :o

Reserved for the article on Asian Horror: Remakes vs. Originals

Shutter A- Easily one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. It twists the genre on it's head to make the somewhat overused ghost with black long hair into a genuinely terrifying prescence. Although the ending is all but guaranteed to catch you off guard, kudos to the film for not waiting 40 minutes to bring on the scares, they start early and keep coming. A scene involving a car was especially frightening, although the climax is the indisputably most frightening scene in the film, and one of the most terrifying in film history. Shutter is a MUST see for any horror fan, or anyone even slightly frightened by The Ring or The Grudge.

I like Ringu a lot Only one scray scene in this movie, but that scene is very scary.

I told you it was terrifying.

Kairo is Pulse. It's being remade next year by the The Weinstein Company and Dimension. It's like a zombie movie without any zombies. When there is no room in hell, depressed ghosts come to earth and lure people into doors that they don't come out of. Too much time spent in the boring first half and far too little in the survivalist second half where the world kinda goes to pot.

It's not that great. Most of these Japanese horror films are more style over substance.


Uzumaki is "Spiral". It's completely formulaic and they don't even get the formula right! In a small Japanese village, this girl's father suddenly becomes obsessed with spirals. I can't remember why and it doesn't really matter to the plot. Anyway, something happens and spirals start getting more people sucked in and someone dies in a washing machine and people start turning into snails. It's pretty bad.

It has no ending really, it just ends when enough people die.

From Asia Pacific Arts Journal

http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/080103/200 ... orror.html

WHY WE CHOSE THIS GENRE?


The fact that Hollywood cannot come up with something original nowadays is nothing new. We are swept over with remakes/reimaginations/recreations/revisions as well as with spin-offs/prequels/sequels almost on weekly basis. There is little good to say about this newest trend. The lack of originality may be one of the reasons why box-office is down this year that much. Many people are tired of seeing the same story told over and over again and being ripped off for that.

But we should always look on the bright side of life, said Monthy Mython. So we do. In an interesting way, the wave of remakes that has in particular hit the horror genre (The Ring, The Amityville Horror, The Fog and countless others) actually introduced us to a new, up until now almost unexplored market - Asian movies. Up until the last couple of years, the most casual audiences knew of Asian films were Kurosawa flicks as well as maybe a handfull of Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike films, but other than that, the marketplace has been relatively unexplored by the Western moviegoers.

One single film has radically changed that. That would be Gore Verbinski's surprise hit The Ring, the remake of Hideo Nakata's Ringu, a Japanese groundbreaking horror hit of 1998 which then again is a version of the much lesser-known TV-made Ringu: Kanzen-ban (1995). The American remake took the audiences aback. Even the most spoiled horror fans were terrified by the simple, yet original concept of the movie and even the toughest moviegoers were creeped out by the movie.

The remake wave was unleashed. Asian Horror became the primary target for US-remakes. But it does have a good side to it. People don't sit there and wait for the US-remakes anymore. They delve deeper into the Asian horror movies and discover many gems themselves before they get rdone in an American fashion. This is not to say that the American remakes are bad, but it is still different. The orignals will always remain what they are, they will always retain their original charm and there are still so many horror movie classics to be discovered among the Asian horror film market. This is not to say that all of their movies are good. Much like in Hollywood or elsewhere rubbish gets produced there as well from time to time. But in any case, even if the movie is not particulary good, it is still different from what you usually get to see in Hollywood. This is a different cultere, there are many things we are simply not unaccustomed with and that is what makes this genre so fascinating.

Personally, I am a declared horror movies fan and the discovery of the Asian horror film market was a great thing since I could finally get myself away from most generic Hollywood and look out for the horror gems somewhere else. One that I have found recently is Shutter and more will be said on it during the festival.

Every self-respeciting horror movies fan and even the casual moviegoers need to give Asian horror a chance anc that is the reason why I chose to co-host this festival for the second time in a row. I hope as many of you will join as possible and will enjoy the movie we'll present. Throughout the festival, we'll provide you with extra informations on the movies that we are dealing with, some written articles on specific topics concerning the genre as well as some in-depth loks into several movies.


HAVE FUN AND BE SCARED!

'Tis true. Ringu wasn't even available here until after The Ring was so successful. I remember how many people used to come into where I worked and say they knew The Ring was actually based off of another movie with such pride, as though they were the only ones who had discovered this minute trivia. Then they'd ask for it. we didn't have it. When we got one copy, it got dozens of rents asap before being stolen altogether.

Alot of people say its even more scary because it comes with a psychological probing of technological dependancy which the Japanese have a much bigger issue with even then we do. Tokyo's density and infrastructure automation put New York to shame. That balck out two years ago here in New York? If that had happened in Tokyo it would have been utter chaos. So Ringu really taps into this discomfort with technology dependency. Or so I've heard...I"m too chicken to watch it...

That's because they don't live in Japan. If they live in Japan they will see that Ringu has manga (it actually started as one), sequels, prequels, cartoon shows, cereal boxes.

The thing about foreign cinema is we think really highly of it because what is filtered out never even reaches us. If we Americans took our best 20 films a year and pushed them on the world market, our movie industry would look good and edgy too!


It's not just Asian movies which are blowing up though, it's ALL international cinema.

And Ringu didn't crack the market open, it was The Matrix combined with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that further allowed for the explosion and exploitation of "asian" film. I would add some anime on to that too.


I don't think the "casual" audience still knows who Takeshi Kitano and Miike are.

For some general audiences, maybe. But I think I am pretty well-versed with no so well-known (and pretty bad) movies of the genre as well. As I said, there are bad ones too, but still, they are different. Different style, different culture. It is something new.





This is an ASIAN HORROR thread and CTHD certainly didn't crack the market open for Asian horror. And of all, the Asian cinema is booming the most by far and away. I don't think I even need to argue about that. Every other Asian film that has some acclaim gets remade nowadays. Look at the list above, half of it is planned to get a remake. The Eye, Shutter, Oldboy, Infernal Affairs...and those that were already remade are waiting to be sequelized.




I am not speaking necessarily of an Average Joe, but of an average movie fan like myself. I didn't know much of Asian cinema before the onslaught of Asian horror other than Kurosawa, Miike, Kitano and maybe one or two others.

THE FESTIVAL HAS OFFICIALLY STARTED!

Over the past couple of weeks, I have seen some movies from that list to catch up for the festival. The most recent viewing was Audition which I am still not sure what to make of. It's....unusual. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is not squeamish. This movie really loses it in the last 30 minutes. Typical of Takashi Miike, but still shocking. The sack scene...shocking.

Anyone who participates in this festival (and I hope there will be a couple), should check out this one and give us their thoughrs.


Here's a summary of AUDITION:

A lonely Japanese widower whose son is planning to move out of the house soon expresses his sadness to a friend and fellow film producer, who becomes inspired to hold an audition for a non-existent film so that the widower can select a new potential bride from the resulting audition pool. The widower ultimately becomes enamored with and fascinated by one particular young woman...but first impressions can often be horribly wrong....


The movie is considered one of the best Asian horror flicks to grace the screens in the past years. It is not a real horror, though, not in the supernatural sense. Nothing out-of-this-world happens and yet it is brutally shocking and horrifying at times. I still need this to go through my head a couple of times more, but I was impressed overall.

I've heard alot about it... lol...

Ju-On - The Grudge 2003 was really, really bad.

Here are my personal recommendations:

Shutter
Audition
Ringu
The Eye


Also, whoever likes a dumb story, little logic, but immesnly cool fighting choreography, get The Twins Effect.

I thought Audition was lame.

Only good scene

SPOILER


mark to read

The bag suddenly starting to move

That creeped me out. Especially the sounds!

And there was a scene that was hard to watch even for me (when the deformed guy crawls out of the bag and is being fed)

I do not think the movie is a masterpiece, but it is impressive and takes some unexpected turns.

Ok, I'm working up the zeal to watch A Tale of Two Sisters. I wanted to see it almost a year ago, and somehow became uncomfortable with the idea. But I'll see if I can ralley for a bit of a bloody fright. Or this Shutter, which no ione will stop talking about. Which do you guys think would be better for me Rogue and Lecter?

Shutter, but you will have to download it because at the moment there is no other way to get it (unless you import the DVD from Asia).

Dolce, definately see Shutter. It was incredible. And you know me, I'm pretty stingy when it comes to movies.

Okey dokey....but I've never downloaded a movie. Where? How?