Programmed October 2024

Japanese Horror

Around the turn of the twenty-first century, a new wave of Japanese terror dubbed J-horror took international audiences by storm. While Hollywood horror films tend to rely on jump scares and explicit gore to generate fear, their Japanese counterparts often emphasize creeping mood and tension in ways that highlight the unknown and unseen and create a sense of lingering dread. From earlier precursors like Kaneto Shindo’s eerily atmospheric fables Onibaba and Kuroneko to outré cult favorites like House and Tetsuo: The Iron Man to international hits from the crest of the J-horror wave—including Cure , Ring , and Ju-On: The Grudge —this sampler of Japanese horror is a spellbinding journey into the dark side of the land of the rising sun.