Five Great Japanese Horror Movies

Whenever Hollywood releases a great horror film, you can be reasonably sure that a similar film was made in Japan several years previously. Japan has been a hotbed for the creation of truly frightening horror movies for several years, but as Western audiences don’t like watching films with subtitles on, the idea usually has to be taken and re-made with an English-speaking cast in order for the concept to become a global success. That means if you want to see what the future of horror films might look like, you should probably be looking at Japan rather than what’s on at American movie theaters.

We want to highlight Japanese horror films in this article not just because they’re great, but because they don’t often get the acclaim they deserve. There are millions of people around the world who don’t know that “The Ring” or “The Grudge” were made in Japanese before they were made in English, and that’s wrong. The English-language films get tie-in products and merchandising opportunities in a way that Japanese movies don’t. You might find an online slots game based on “Halloween” attracting big money at online slots websites, but you won’t find one based on “Uzumaki.” We’re not saying that having a movie adapted and turned into an Online Slots UK to make money is a barometer of a film’s success, but it’s unfair that some lesser films get all the love while Japanese classics go under the radar.

With all of the above in mind, here are five Japanese horror films you should go out of your way to see if you’re a fan of the genre.

Uzumaki

We’ve already mentioned “Uzumaki” once, so it would be wrong if we didn’t start with this Akihiro Higuchi masterpiece from the year 2000. It’s not without good reason that Syfy refers to this 90-minute long freak show as ‘the scariest movie you’ve never heard of.’ Based on the manga series by Junji Ito, “Uzumaki” is set in a bizarre world where the residents of a small town slowly start to become obsessed with strange spiral shapes that appear all around them. The only person who isn’t affected is Kirie, a schoolgirl who soon finds herself at the epicenter of an unfolding horror that will live long in your memory after the credits roll on the film. The spirals aren’t here to entertain the locals – they’re here to possess and then destroy them. Part surrealism and part body horror, “Uzumaki” is a highly original creation quite unlike anything else we’ve ever seen.

Dark Water

You’ve probably heard of “Dark Water” before, because of the 2005 Jennifer Connelly-led movie that received a tepid response from critics and movie-goers. It’s a shame that the 2005 incarnation of the movie is the one that most people know because the Japanese original from 2002 is a far superior product. Thematically and tonally, it’s quite similar to the Japanese version of “The Ring,” but that’s not really surprising when you consider that both films were directed by Hideo Nakata, and based on books by Koji Suzuki. The central premise of moving into an apartment and finding a mysterious stain on the ceiling might not be anything new to those of us who are accustomed to renting city-center properties, but this stain isn’t anything to do with damp or leaking pipes. Not all water can wash you clean of your sins, and the single mother and her child living in this apartment are in for the shock of their lives.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

OK, bear with us on this one, because the plot is going to sound a little strange. The core of the plot of this Shinya Tsukamoto movie is about an everyday Japanese office worker who has slowly but surely begun to mutate into an iron man, with an enormous drill where his genitals ought to be. The ‘body horror’ box has a definite tick in it, but somehow the film manages to avoid becoming quite as ludicrous as it ought to be given that premise. The film is one of a trilogy, all of which blend cyberpunk visuals with gruesome imagery and existential questions. We don’t know if it’s a horror movie so much as it’s a shocking movie, but it made quite an impression on us and has done the same for countless other people who’ve seen it. Needless to say, you’ll never look at a drill in quite the same way ever again.

Kairo

Plenty of horror films made during the past two decades are based on the idea of something nasty coming through the internet to get you. It’s no longer an original concept, but it was when “Kairo” was made back in 2001 when the internet was new and scary. The foundations of the tale are the same as many a classic ghost story, but the introduction of a cyber aspect to the terror is what makes this twist on the tradition stand out. This is yet another Japanese horror film that found itself being remade for American audiences a few years after its release, but “Pulse” isn’t worth your time. “Kairo” is. You might not always understand what’s happening, but that’s part of the point. But yourself in the shoes of a young college student who’s new to the internet at the turn of the century, and watch with glee as the technological terrors threaten to consume her.

Ringu

Of course this film was going to be at the top of our list. What else could possibly have gone here? Without the success of “Ringu” (or “The Ring,” as it’s more commonly known everywhere), the trend of Japanese horror movies becoming successful elsewhere in the world may never have started at all. Even if you’ve never seen the film, you know the story. There’s a terrifying girl called Sadako trapped inside a videotape, and if you play the tape, she’ll come for you. VHS was already on its way out of circulation by 1998 when this film was made, but even if it hadn’t have been, “Ringu” would probably have made everyone so afraid of their old tape collection that they’d throw it out anyway. Often imitated but never bettered, “Ringu” is a classic of Japanese cinema, and it’s stood the test of time.