I've found it always helps to have an experienced guide the first time you visit an Asian restaurant — preferably someone who can read the menu. Well, I'm not a native-speaker, and I certainly won't try to bluff you with my use of chopsticks, but I've sampled the fare enough to feel confident in giving at least the beginners among you this brief introduction to the wonders of recent Asian horror. Genre film is always a mixed bag. In trying to pick the best of what we've encountered in our survey of Asian horror film we've quickly realized that such labels as "The Best Of" and "Top Ten" wouldn't fit. First, the field was two wide to cover comprehensively. Second, all of these films move well beyond their genre even as they elevate our idea of what "horror film" means in 2003. Best to say that all the films below will likely scare the absolute daylights out of almost anyone. Most of these films are currently available only in multi-region format requiring a DVD player that can play films I various Region and Formats such as PAL. Such players can be had cheaply and research is easy enough online.

Kwaidan (1965)
Masaki Kobayashi
Japan
We're only reviewing one older Asian film but even a cursory glance at Masaki Kobayashi's stunning group of feudal era ghost stories shows it to be a must starting point for any real understanding of the current state of Asian horror. Made in the mid sixties the film has long been respected for it's cultural and historical authenticity and for the unsettling quality of it's mesmerizing shot composition and use of color.

The four stories that make up Kwaidan are taken from the writings of folklorist Lafcadio Hearn. The writer who was of Greek/Irish Heritage moved to Japan in his late thirties and worked hard to assimilate himself completely into Japanese culture becoming a naturalized citizen of Japan in 1895. He published Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904); the word kwaidan translates directly into weird tales.

Hearn's large collection provided filmmaker Kobayashi an atmospheric palette, rich in dread, to draw from. The director, after choosing four tales, painstakingly adapted them to the visual medium utilizing enormous studio sets and a completely post-synched soundtrack. Elements of Kabuki and Bunraku puppet theatre also found their way into his filmmaking technique and the end results were astonishing. Freeze almost any one frame of film and its composition can be fruitfully studied. Such a controlled approach would drain the life out of most art but Kwaidan glides across the eye and mind with the grace of a black swan.

The first tale The Black Hair tells the story of a samurai who, being sick of his poverty, divorces a good wife to marry the daughter of a rich man. But his rich life does not satisfy him and he soon begins to long for the love of his faithful former companion. He returns to find his old house in need of serious repair but his wife…. She has remained unchanged, even her hair, which should have grown gray, is still rich lustrous black. Exploding with happiness he vows to stay only to discover the horrible truth about his wife's unchanged state.

The Woman of the Snow introduces a woodcutter who becomes lost with a friend in a forest during a snowstorm. When the woodcutter awakens he finds a snow phantom, female in appearance hovering over his sleeping friend. Moments later her icy breath has killed him leaving the woodcutter to beg for his own life. Taking pity, the phantom promises to let him go as long as he never tells another living soul what he has seen. Ten years later the man, now happily married and prosperous, contemplates sharing this burdensome story with his wife. Doe he or doesn't he?

The third story, Hoichi the Earless, is perhaps the most effective of the four and concerns a blind musician whose love of ancient battle songs wakens the ghosts of warriors whose burial grounds are nearby. So touching is the old monk's singing that the ghosts demand a command performance. But the head of the monastery warns Hoichi that the ghosts will slowly sap him of his strength until the troubadour is weak enough for them to attack ripping him to pieces. The Monk paints Hoichi's entire body with protective prayer verses…. forgetting the unfortunate man's ears.

Kwaidan' s last episode, In A Cup of Tea deals appropriately enough with story telling. A writer, working on the tale of a warrior, discovers the reflection of someone else in his cup of tea. Shortly he is confronted in the flesh by this mischievous apparition, which he then challenges to a duel. But when the elusive spirit is joined by several others the writer must falls back on his skills as a storyteller to restore order.

Kwaidan clocks in at less than three hours but not by much. Though slow paced the film is elegant beyond description provoking the eye with one powerful image after another. Noticeably free of the violent imagery many expect from the genre, Kwaidan is nonetheless an unsettling, masterfully adapted vision of the supernatural folklore of Japan.

Ringu (1998)
Hideo Nakata
Japan
The best known, and so far only, recent Asian horror film made widely available on Region 1 Encoded DVD Ringu was the first of these new films I encountered. I use the term encounter instead of "saw" because even on crummy pixilated VCD, watching The Ring was like encountering another living being, one that scared the living daylights out of me. This wasn't just a campfire story ala' Blair Witch or some urban legend dressed up in body-count clothes. Ringu had all the earmarks of a genuine myth rooted in some ancient truth about evil.

Reiko, a journalist and single mother, hears rumors of a video tape that, if watched triggers a ghastly death for the viewer one week. After the mysterious death of her niece she begins talking to other teens and links several more deaths to the story. Her investigation turns up the tape, which she watches. She immediately receives a phone call during which a disturbing voice intones "Seven Days." She has seen the other victims; mad eyes open wide and mouths shrieking in abject terror. As she races the clock to save the life of herself and others who view the tape she finds herself immersed in an impossible world of ancient evil and modern parapsychology. She also learns about a strange young girl with long black hair named Sadako. To tell you anything more is unnecessary. The film works magic with dread and slow pacing that is best experienced rather than explained.

The video in question is a masterpiece of unease. Images float; sometimes sputter by in ways that seem unconnected. It won't spoil the story to tell you that you see a little bit more of the tape every time it's played and every new viewing prods us to connect the images together until we think we have the meaning of the whole figured out.

A key difference between The Ring and other vengeful ghost stories has to do with what it has to say about the nature of evil and Nakata navigates that territory masterfully. By the time this film is over you aren't sure which is worse the effect of the videotape or what it drives our heroine to do. But the thing that makes The Ring a truly great film is the way it redefines the conventions of the horror film even as it ratchets up our feelings of unease and downright terror.

The vengeful ghost story, especially in the American tradition is generally about justice on some level. The ghost is governed by a desire for justice that if met will result in peace for the ghost and freedom from harm for the living. A good recent example of this in American film would be What Lies Beneath. But without giving away the ending it's safe to say that Ringu is much more in the tradition of Robert Wise' classic 1963 film The Haunting. The twist that Nakata puts on this age-old ghost story convention is enough to chill anybody's blood.

A word should be said about the American remake. If you can avoid it prior to seeing the Japanese original you should do so. While Gore Verbinski fills out the plot and pacing of Nakata's somewhat slow 1998 effort very, very well, the special effects (the one thing that no American film has a right to do badly) are what trip The Ring (2003) up-especially the handling of the girl Samara. The effects aren't all bad by a long shot. The victims are absolutely ghastly and some of the best quick cut shocks I've ever seen on film and there is a moment with the young girl that will likely send anyone's popcorn flying into the next dimension but in the end we see just a bit too much of Samara to invoke that sense of the Other that the Japanese original threatens us with. I think I know why Verbinski did this but I'd argue he didn't need to.

Ringu has been criticized for being a little too simple. That's fair but the key word is a little. Ringu overcomes that obstacle by any fair estimation to emerge as one of the best horror movies in many, many years. There's a hint of despair if you take Ringu's ending one way there's also a hint of hope if you take it another. How far will we go to rescue each other? What are we willing to suffer?

The Eye (2002)
The Pang Brothers
Hong Kong

If Ringu plays like a straight simple horror film then Danny and Oxide Pang's The Eye plays like a slippery hybrid whose deft blend of genre conventions ends up in the service of a theme so intimate and yet so grand that my first viewing left me speechless. This is a film about the value of suffering, the importance of forgiveness, and the importance of trust in providence. And yet in the midst of such a heartening message come moments of extreme dread, horror and a strong sense of the duality we all struggle with. There is the I and the we, individual and community. What affects one affects the other. If only we could see the big picture.

The label Supernatural thriller only begins to describe The Eye but I'd rather just tell you that this is a stunning piece of storytelling. But how can that be? Even a few viewings later I'm still left feeling like the basic premise of the film sounds like a half-baked X-Files episode melded with The Sixth Sense.

A beautiful young girl named Mann has been blind since the age of two. Eighteen years later, a new and risky corneal transplant operation restores her vision; but a series of inexplicable events makes her question whether her newfound gift of sight is a blessing or a curse. She has no memory of her own adult face but soon she realizes that the face she sees in the mirror is not her own. Soon she begins seeing other things, things not of this world and she also discovers the identity of the woman in the mirror: Ling, the original owner of the corneas! What does Ling want? Mann's journey takes her to Ling's home in a small Thailand village. There she finds her fate may be irrevocably intertwined with Ling's who also saw things she did not want.

The use and execution of special effects in this film are very impressive and serve the story in unexpected and creative ways. The ghosts as they appear in this film lay to waste almost any others ever seen on the American screen. I've witnessed two screenings of this film and both times I saw large sections of the audience not only jump out of their chairs but sit very, very nervously back down not quite sure they wanted to finish the film. Yet beyond its excellent special effects the genius of The Eye is the way that it uses Mann's struggle to enlighten us about our own. We strive to see, but we are unaware not only of our place in the human community but in the metaphysical cosmos.

I can't recommend The Eye more highly. It was recently purchased by American director Sam Raimi, who has also enlisted the services of the original directors, The Pang Brothers, to bring it to the American screen.

Audition (2002)
Takeshi Miike
Japanese

Although this film did not receive anything like a wide release you may have heard of it particularly if you travel in film circles or have any interest in foreign film. The first time I heard about Audition was when it inspired festival walkouts and vile insults at several prominent venues during initial screening. Audition is certainly the darkest most disturbing film reviewed here but I'm including it because, besides being a very well made film, it is also already enjoying cult status and represents an important facet of the Pan Asian horror film.

Much of what passes for Asian horror is in fact more akin to pornography. Series like Guts of a Virgin and The Guinea Pig Experiment offer the most explicit and degrading violence imaginable mixing in large amounts of sadomasochism. There is a longer essay here on the large amount of above ground sadomasochistic imagery in Asian culture in general, especially in Manga and anime but I won't bother with it here. The important thing is to differentiate from the use of such imagery for purely pornographic purposes vs. the use of it in the arts generally, particularly in a culture that has thrown Pandora's box wide open and needs to grapple with the choices it has made.

This is the only film I've seen from director Takashi Miike. He has garnered a reputation as a prolific director specializing in producing work of questionable filmic value and utilizing pointlessly shocking imagery. It's a reputation that he has recently sought to distance himself from but having seen Audition several times I'm not sure I think his critics have the right to dismiss him so quickly. Audition, if uncomfortable to watch, is still a well-told story with power to haunt the viewer with it's unflinching fly on the wall view of a relationship poisoned by assumption and disillusionment.

Aoyami is a middle-aged recently widowed man who decides to get back in the dating game but is unsure how to proceed. While talking about his dilemma with a close friend who runs a small film studio his friend gets what sounds like a slightly shady but harmless idea. They will hold auditions for a non-existent film and the casting call will be based on the character traits Aoyami would like to see in a wife. Headshots and bios pour in and before the interviews even begin Aoyami is drawn to the photo of Assami, a thin girl with long black hair who had been a dancer before an injury ended her career. When the men phone Assami to set up a time for an interview we see a disturbing but ambiguous shot of her kneeling down in a run down apartment, rocking in front of the phone, face covered by her long black hair and in the background a large unnatural looking burlap sack.

Though this is disturbing, at first there is very little to suggest that Audition is anything more than a slightly askew drama with an undercurrent of comedy and romance. These two characters are clearly wounded and seem to need each other. So when, after an enigmatic first date in which we learn too little about this beautiful mysterious woman, Aoyami tells his son he is taking Assami away for the weekend to ask for her hand in marriage we think he might be acting in haste, but we are also hopeful. The pair's arrival at the hotel resort leads to a quick consummation by Assami but when Aoyami awakens the next morning he discovers Assami has gone without a trace before he can ask for her hand. Feeling guilty about his deceptive ruse and determined to find Assami his efforts to track her down lead instead to new facts that seem totally at odds with what little he thought he knew about her.

At this point things take a decided turn towards the gruesome. The man who had originally given Assami her references for the audition has disappeared off the face of the earth and been gone for over a year, a tenant in the same building claims to have found some human fingers near the apartment, a horribly crippled uncle she had lived with in her early days as a dancer has gone mad. We then become aware that while Aoyami was out Asssami has invaded his home and lies waiting for him. Too late, as he drinks his ritual before dinner scotch does he realize the decanter was drugged. As he falls to the floor the pieces of what he has learned converge in montage form for the viewer painting a horrible picture of Assami, what she keeps in that large burlap sack and what horrible things she endured to make her the way she is. What follows is a long and graphic scene of torture that involves acupuncture, razor wire and sound effects will ring in your ears long after you encounter them.

I won't spoil the ending except to say that Miike has chosen the same narrative thrust that life often seems to have (at least in the short term) the loose ends don't always tie up neatly. Discovering one thing does not always lead to understanding the thing you most want to know. There is sadness in this film that transcends easy labels.

Why anyone would want to watch Audition is perhaps beside the point. It struck me that this is exactly the sort of film that critics will want to stick their particular ism on and there have already been treatments of the film that interpret it as a feminist backlash against the sadomasochistic objectification so common in Asian culture. And yet I think the film transcends that sort of filtering and demands to be experienced solely on it's own merits.

The very title Audition suggests perception. Can this person fill this role? Can they be trusted? We, the audience, audition the film by looking at the headshot, which is the poster or the trailer, and commit with our budget, which is the money we pay to see it. Of course the analogy breaks down at some point. But I think that beyond feminism, Freudian psychology etc. Audition is first and foremost a movie made by a director who who is desperately seeking to break out of the contract so many creative people feel constrained by. Miike, as you may guess, isn't in the business of back scratching. Your intent may be being entertained, or at least made comfortable but he would rather tell you stories that upset you and make you walk out of the theater or grapple with his characters.

Audition ultimately tells the story of two people whose dysfunction keeps them from what they most need, true intimacy. Assami has defined her self via the specters of psychosis inducing childhood abuse, a combination of disciplinary demands and emotional neglect, and the safety she feels in domination through pain, in being the punisher rather than the punished. Her very sense of self is predicated on the concept that love and pain are virtually exchangeable: and perhaps that pain is the superior mode. For Aoyami his willingness to go along with the audition scam is testimony to his own desire not to be hurt anymore. In the end even he must acknowledge that this is a dual victimization. Both Assami and Aoyami have maintained false positions and although their actions are not equitably moral they are equitably decipherable.

Miike is demanding a lot, perhaps too much, of his audience. In Western film there is little that would prepare the average American for the experience of Audition. But it must be noted that Miike has made a film purposively designed to elicit both thought and reaction. He knows the images will bother us, perhaps even disgust us, and yet as his characters are trapped in his camera, in a story he felt must be told, perhaps we, trapped also on the outside looking in, will try to see through his eyes beyond the pain into that wound and feel some of that loss.

Three (2002)
Various
South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong

Anthology films are most often split up into 3 or 4 separate tales. Few live up to expectations. Those old enough to remember the great anthology horror comics like Tales from the Crypt will remember that you were lucky to get one real nugget of gold per issue. Three certainly has disparity between the episodes but I found them all compelling, beautifully realized shorts and I'm tempted to place in contention with the greats of it's type.

The great anthology films like Dead of Night (1945) Black Sabbath (1964) and of course Kwaidan (1965) use their stories as a thread to tie together all the elements that make up the uncanny and unsettling quality that any good horror story offers. In short they usually offer a loose worldview through which any of the stories makes sense in comparison to the others. Something along the lines of "the supernatural is real and can make itself felt in the natural world." This invoking of the fantastic- that which is suspected but not necessarily factually understood as real often depends heavily on the character of the cynic for dramatic tension and emotional impact. There must be someone who discovers the truth along with us in order for us to know how to respond. Whereas Kwaidan (1965) explored the folklore of Japan Three offers three films from South Korea, Thailand and Hong Kong.

The first and most powerful of the films is Memories in which a young husband suffering from memory loss desperately tries to remember what became of his wife who has gone missing. As he struggles with his loss he suffers horrifying nightmares, inexplicable visions of violence, and a growing sense of menace shows through ordinary things in his apartment and we see his wife wake up on a deserted street with no memory of who she is or where she comes from. Finding an address in her purse she rushes to it in the hopes of finding out more. Each character remembers bits and snatches of the past but they mentally jog through them in a disconnected chronology unable to meaningfully reassemble them.

Director Kim Jee Woons uses every element to his advantage in telling what could have been a very mundane bit of Grand Guignol excess. The camera cuts through this often-silent exercise with frenetic leaps suggesting the passage of time one moment and characters emotional state the next. When Kim zooms in he can make even the sight of a parked car seem threatening. The soundtrack when it does appear is equally disjointed; sounds seem to angle of the landscape directly at us, aural distortions begin to form a collage of dread. There are several jump cuts that still unnerve me several viewings later, some well placed moments of violence that serve to advance the storyline instead of merely announce their expected presence in a horror film.

What we, and these two people discover, doesn't answer the mystery of how memory seems such an elusive thing but it hints at one very disturbing quality of human memory, it's selective, self serving, and capable of the most grotesque distortions.

Our second film is from Thailand and deals with the art of puppetering as practiced by both Hun Lakorn Lek and Kohn performers. The Hun Lakorn Lek utilizes elaborate puppets to retell the stories of gods, heroes and demons. Theirs is a privileged life in which the gain wealth and recognition. The Kohn tell the same stories but hide behind masks to hide their life of poverty and lowly social status.

It is a revered belief that Lek puppets are actually brought to life to tell their stories-an ability that only the original owner of the puppets can possess and that a curse is placed on the puppets to prevent anyone else from using them. When Kru Tong, a skilled Kohn performer comes upon a trunk of these puppets by chance he begins posing as a Hun Lakorn Lek performer with horrific results. Are the puppets cursed or is Kru Tong merely mad with jealousy?

The last tale, made in Hong Kong, is titled Going Home and concerns Chan Wai a police officer whose son comes up missing after the pair moves into a decayed apartment complex. They have few neighbors but when Chan knocks on his neighbor Yu Fai's door he becomes suspicious and decides to wait for the man to leave so he can investigate. Stealing in quietly he finds Yu Fai's wife, dead in the bathtub, just as Yu Fai strikes him unconscious. Now Yu Fai's prisoner, Chan Wai can only hope that time with the madman Yu Fai will unravel the mystery of his missing son, Yu's dead wife and Yu's mad belief that he can resurrect her through ancient Chinese medicine.

This is a nuanced, potent and poignant story of love, loss and the nature of death made even more powerful by a few well-placed shocks and a stunning end twist worthy of The Sixth Sense.

Kairo (2001)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Japan

If The Eye is a supernatural action thriller Kairo might be described as a supernatural non-action thriller. But unlike Ringu, which, it could be argued, has some pacing problems Kairo simply takes it's time which seems right to me considering Kairo is about the end of the world.

While investigating the disappearance of a classmate a group of students discover a website that offers the brave of heart the chance to meet an actual ghost. Knowing that their friend committed suicide shortly after visiting the site they are horrified when the same thing begins happening to everyone around them. Soon they find themselves encountering the effects of this plague everywhere and begin to wonder if escape is possible.

Like many of the above-mentioned films the pacing of this film is slow by Western standards. But the power of the ghost imagery and the artistry with which it's presented is undeniable. And there is a sly subtle power at work in the central theme of the film that echoed Hamlet's line, "To be or not to be." In a way Kairo's thrills have to do with the world of the unseen forcing itself on the world of the seen. The doorway is our own need to look beyond and know is there an afterlife? Are ghosts real? Does the film postulate that we are better off not knowing about such things? I don't think so. Consider this film an unsettling haiku on man's struggle with despair.

This film has been purchased by Wes Craven for remake rights which could bode well if Craven sticks to the less is more theory of horror that makes Kairo work so well in it's current incarnation.

Uzumaki (2000)
Higuchinsky
Japan

An object traveling along the outer edge of a vortex follows that pattern until it is too late to do otherwise in large part because the force generated by the shape of the vortex becomes irresistible. That downward progression forms the narrative movement of Higuchinsky's, Uzumaki.

Adapted from a well-known Manga, Uzumaki tells the story of a small village that becomes the focus of a seemingly unstoppable evil force, which manifests itself in the form of spirals. Some of the spirals, like the backs of snails and fingertips are part of the natural world others manifest themselves supernaturally As people in the village encounter these spirals they become obsessed with them and are transformed spreading the force through others until the entire town becomes in danger of being redefined by the evil aspect of this malevolent force.

Higuchinsky expertly weaves spiral imagery throughout this funny, sometime manic but ultimately disturbing tale of obsession and madness. Though I hesitate to speak categorically, having never read the Manga this is based on, I will say that this is as extraordinary an adaptation of the comic form as I have ever seen. Characters shift between the prosaically real to being outright cartoon-like performing actions that are clearly not possible in the real world and yet one never has the feeling of being yanked from the moment. Uzumaki exists in it's own awful universe.

Other films have made great use of the spiral including Vertigo and the more recent but still masterful Dark City but whereas each of those films seeks for it's characters to break out Uzumaki merely descends reminding me of a famous quote by H.P. Lovecraft,

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but someday the piecing together of this associated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

The suffocating pull of cosmic dread has a physical counterpart in the black hole described in physics as a gravitational collapse from which nothing, not even light can escape. What if the vampire doesn't stop when we hold up the cross? What if the ghost isn't satisfied with vengeance on the one who wronged it? What if the light we thought was at the end of the tunnel is the merely the gleam on an evil clowns eye. The Asian horror film has resurrected horror as something that does more than merely entertain, plunging the audience into dark "what ifs" that put them back in touch with all those questions they'd rather leave alone. In an age of disposable entertainment perhaps this is appropriate. Stories should haunt, cause us to search for deliverance, but most of all they should reinforce the truth that in order for stories to move us at all tey must touch on what is real not just necessarily what we can taste touch feel and hear. Those senses are merely the portals through which truth passes. In the end good and evil aren't just constructs, fear, joy and love aren't just emotions, where they ultimately lead is to a concrete reality; a supernatural one that like Cthulhu will demolish the notion of all that safe plastic modern world we think of as home.

Be sure to see our Intro to Asian Horror