Retribution | 叫 (2006)
A creepy murder-mystery with a ghost-story twist, Retribution (or 叫, “sakebi” actually isn’t all that bad! Better than I was expecting, anyway. Even if a bit predictable.
Police detective Yoshioka (Kouji Yakusho) is called upon to investigate a bizarre series of drownings. They think that they’re dealing with a serial killer, due to [...]
Um, well, I can definitely say that 1964’s Onibaba isn’t at all what I was expecting. And that’s a good thing to be sure. For 1964, this is a seriously twisted, frank, raw, provocative, and mesmerizing movie.
Set sometime in Japan’s war torn medieval period, we find an old woman (Nobuko Otawa) and her daughter-in-law (Jitsuko [...]
Audition | オオヂチオン (1999)
First off, Takashi Miike is one sick and twisted individual. Why I keep using those words in this blog I dunno, just a product of the stuff I’m seeing I guess. But Miike especially seems to have a firm grasp on the stuff that makes you squirm. In Audition, he manages to [...]
Tetsuo: The Iron Man | 鉄男 (1989)
Japanese Title: 鉄男 (Iron Man)
US Title: Tetsuo: The Iron Man
First off, I think I need to explain myself here. Tetsuo was my very first exposure to the world of Japanese cinema, back in the early 1990’s. What’s that say about me, then?! lol.
I say that because Tetsuo: The [...]
US Title: The Machine Girl
Japanese Title: 片腕マシンガール (One armed Mashin Gaaru)
Continuing on with the Halloween/J-Horror theme, I bring you… well, I’m not quite sure what to make of this. The Machine Girl is a twisted film spanning a few genre’s really, typical Tokyo “splatter” horror, comedy, and action.
Although it really doesn’t pull off any of [...]
US Title: Marebito
Japanese Title: 稀人 (“Rare Person?” Makes sense I guess… Better would be “Barely Human” I think…)
Take a dash of Dante’s Hell allusions, some modern surveillance tech, creepy myths about subterranean underworlds, vampirism, phobias, throw it all together, and you get Marebito.
After freelance videographer Masuoka (Shinya Tsukamoto) captures a guy knifing himself in the [...]
US Title: Rasen
Japanese Title: らせん (The Spiral)
Continuing in the Halloween spooky J-Horror theme, I bring you another entry from the series of “The Ring,” one of the sequels. Rasen, or “the spiral.”
Here the curse of Sadako carries on more-or-less directly after the events of the original film, The Ring. There is another part to the [...]
[This post is part of the Halloween 2009 theme. Don't worry, I'll cover more non-horror movies after the 31st!]
US Title: Ringu 0
Japanese Title: リング ０： バースデイ
I’m sure by now you’ve either seen, or heard of, the big hit J-horror movie, “The Ring.” Either the US Remake, or the original Japanese film “Ringu” by director Norio [...]
US Title: Suicide Club
Japanese Title: 自殺サークル (Suicide Circle)
First off, you know any movie with a tagline of ”それではみなさん、さようなら！” (“Well then, goodbye everybody”) is going to be involving a lot of death and carnage. And “Suicide Club”, or “Suicide Circle” does not disappoint.
Sure enough, from the get-go, as a group of high school girls throw themselves [...]
US Title: Dark Water
Japanese Title: ほの暗い水のそこから (“From the Murky Water”)
One of the “canonical” J-horror stories, and still one of the creepiest, Dark Water pits the ghost of a young girl against a single mother and her young daughter, with unpleasant results.
Recently divorced mother Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) and her daughter Ikuko (Rio Kanno) move into [...]
