East Asian Horror
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Introduction At first glance, Koji Shiraishi’s Shirome (2010) looks like a joke. It opens not with dread or blood or ghostly imagery, but with rehearsal footage of a real-life J-pop idol group (Momoiro Clover Z) practicing choreography, laughing with one another, and nervously talking about their dreams of one day performing on Kōhaku Uta Gassen,…
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Ringu, the movie that started it all; the urtext, if you will, of J-Horror. Based on the Koji Suzuki novel of the same name, Hideo Nakata’s 1998 masterpiece didn’t just redefine horror for a generation: it created a new cinematic language of dread. Eschewing gore and cheap jump scares, Ringu roots its terror in the…
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