Japanese Film Festival 2023 (Shaw)
The J-Horror Virus
Rating
NC16 Some Nudity and Horror
Language
Japanese with English subtitles
Director
APPLETON Sarah, SHARP Jasper
Cast
KUROSAWA Kiyoshi, SHIMIZU Takashi, INOO Rie, FUJI Takako
Synopsis
“The J-Horror Virus” is a feature-length documentary that delves into the origins, evolution, and global impact of a unique genre of supernatural horror films originating from Japan. These films feature vengeful ghosts who manifest through modern technology, set against a backdrop of urban alienation and societal decay.From its origins in Teruyoshi Ishii’s fake documentary Psychic Vision: Jaganrei (1988) and Norio Tsuruta’s seminal Scary True Stories (1991/92) straight-to-video series, through such key titles as Hideo Nakata’s Ring (1998), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse (2001) and Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), critics and the films’ makers reflect on how the bleak dystopian visions and unsettling atmospheres that made these works so unique made their way across the world.