31 Days of Asian Horror: Dumplings (2004)

Welcome to the first day of the 31 Days of Asian Horror! Today we are talking about a classic movie from Hong Kong that I think deserves to be on everyone’s radar if they are into Asian horror and gastro horror, 2004’s Dumplings directed by Fruit Chan. The movie was originally part of a horror anthology Three…Extremes, and was then turned into this full-length feature. I have not seen the short yet, so I don’t know how it compares but from what I’ve read it is fairly close, leaving out a few storylines from the length. Both movies are based on a book of the same name by Lillian Lee who serves as script writer for the films.

I very much wanted to make this review as spoiler-free as possible because Dumplings is so very good and like any good movie most of it is in the reveal - but the main reveal happens fairly early on, leaving the rest of the movie to spend its time taking it to new extremes so while I won’t spoil all I will spoil some. The premise is quite simple. Mrs Li, a former actress who is not handling aging well and is in a failing and loveless marriage, finds help in Aunt Mei, a chef who makes “special” dumplings that she claims help with youth and rejuvenation. The cure isn’t fast enough for the actress and she begins asking for stronger and higher potency doses to the point of obsession. The secret ingredient being used that of fetuses - mostly those that have been aborted - making it harder to find for Aunt Mei the right type to help her client.

The movie uses several techniques to lean into the unsettling nature outside of the reveal of the special ingredient that I thought worked well to create the tension of the watch. The sound design is most unique adding to the true tone of the movie, most of it heightened in unnerving but not overpowering ways. Not a good fit for anyone who has a sensitivity to food sounds (great if that’s your ASMR thing!), but it also ups the volume on a lot of background noises of everyday life. It is also very realistic in its presentation of these edits and creates a world in which you get placated by the reality of it all as the story progresses.

The way Aunt Mei creates her dishes are (gruesome) works of art that end up looking like any other dish you would be presented with from a chef who loves their craft. Aunt Mei’s approach to it is very matter-of-fact and views it as a way of using something that has already been discarded for her benefit. It’s not unbelievable that someone would go to these extremes for their desired wants. The outward change in the person is very subtle, mirroring that of someone having lost a few pounds or even just playing around with their outward appearance with clothes and makeup. With the exception of not knowing how old Aunt Mei is (she only hints around that she’s old enough to be called an Aunt), nothing seems too fantastical. It’s all so subtle but so excruciatingly important to Mrs Li, yet the viewer sees very little difference. It’s mostly that the confidence that the dish is working is what makes Mrs Li feel like it truly is changing her on a biological level.

There are moments in the film where we see Mrs Li’s husband eat balut, a fertilized egg that has been cooked in the shell. It’s a popular dish that is not seen as something that is too taboo to eat and is a mirror to what the dumplings are. The movie uses these types of imagery to subtly focus on the inconsistencies of what is acceptable for males in society and what is not for females. At its core, the movie is about the constant pressure females have to maintain a level of youth that their male counterparts don’t have to, even at the risk of going to the darkest most extreme and harmful place. There is never a point in the movie that Mrs Li is seen as looking bad, and while her husband is unfaithful he never specifically mentions her looks or alludes to his promiscuity coming from that. Even with some of the dialogue between the two women, it highlights the internalized trauma that society has placed on women. While Aunt Mei seems like the one that has the most freedom being her own “boss” she still lives in a society where she has to look her part and has kept up this ritual for most of her life.

All-in-all I do think this is an essential movie to add to your watchlist if you haven’t already. I thought it was entertaining and it kept me on the edge of my seat in all the right horror ways. The cinematography is fantastic, and the script kept me thinking and guessing as to where we were going to go. Bai Ling and Miriam Yeung are amazing in their roles and played well off of each other in a cat-and-mouse game where the two were ultimately looking for the same sad prize: the validation of males.

While it was just taken off of Tubi so there is no free streaming place to find Dumplings, it is available on DVD and OTT places to rent. Three…Extremes is a bit easier to find and on several services for free.

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The Guardian (2021) Review

The 2021 Vietnamese horror movie, The Guardian (Thiên Than Ho Menh), was just added to Netflix’s catalogue and I decided to give it a try. I’m always looking for more Asian horror, especially accessible, and the plot of the movie seemed fairly interesting enough. After the suicide of a popular singer, her backup singer’s career starts to take off.

The movie, while not necessarily the best thing that I’ve seen, had some genuinely interesting moments. I have been burned by Netflix’s selection of Asian horror before, especially when it’s outside of Korea or Japan, and thought that a two + hour movie was going to be hard to get through, but I surprisingly didn’t feel too much of the length. Don’t get me wrong, the movie does feel weighed down by the time at moments, specifically as the horror is slow to come in, but the events leading up are an interesting drama about the fall of a singer, the rise of her backup singer, and the downfalls of the music industry and striving to make it when you fell you don’t have any sort of support. I think a lot of what I enjoyed about the movie was Amee’s portrayal of Huyen. She carries the role in a nice balance between naivety and genuineness, while being jaded by her dreams coming true. I felt the relationship she had with other characters seemed true and not forced.

The movie does fail at being a true horror, and frankly it’s not even a thriller. It chooses to follow more about the horrors and downfalls of the real world, and while it isn’t high-paced thriller it seems it wants to be, it lives in as an interesting drama surrounding an incident between the singers. While there is an introduction of a creepy doll, it fails to be much of the horror plot and is generally too campy. The doll we do get, however, is fairly interesting even if it fails to serve it’s horror purpose. Admittedly, I haven’t watched a lot of possessed doll horror, it’s not something I generally gravitate towards, but the movie takes it in a different approach than those that I’ve seen and incorporates local traditions and religion with the doll and even though we don’t get what I feel we needed with it, it added an interesting level to the overall story.

If you like slow (slooow) burn horrors, that fall more into the drama side and a creepy doll or two being thrown in, I say give the movie a shot. It’s not perfect and fails to deliver as a horror but I’ve seen much worse from Netflix’s selection, and at least the story was interesting.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: The Bloodthirsty Trilogy (1971-1974)

Happy Halloween!

Today’s Asian horror pick is a trio of movies produced by Toho Studios: The Vampire Doll, Lake of Dracula, and Evil of Dracula. While there is no plot connection between the three, they are all directed by Michio Yamamoto and written by Ei Ogawa. The movies aren’t like other Japanese horror films, and fall more closely into the style of British gothic horror of the 50’s. I really enjoyed all three films, and they are the perfect fall afternoon binge but can be watched out of order without any worry about ruining the experience. What makes the trio even more interesting is that while they are pretty close to their original source, there is still a sense of what we would see in some later Japanese horror movies and the inherent difference in culture makes the movies unique in their own right. Sometimes you just need a classic spooky tale that doesn’t rely on gore or jump scares, and who centered the spookiness in original scares, haunting organ melodies, and things that go bump in the night.

The Vampire Doll (1970)

After returning home from an overseas trip Kazuhiko (Atsuo Nakamura) goes to visit his girlfriend at her country home. After not hearing from him for a week, Kazuhiko's sister Keiko (Kayo Matsuo) goes to figure out where her brother went with the aid of her fiance, Hiroshi (Akira Nakao).

Lake of Dracula (1971)

After a nightmare about a vampire when she was young, Akiko’s (Midori Fujita) dream is revealed true when an empty coffin shows up. Akiko's boyfriend, a doctor on the island, realizes that something is amiss when a series of deaths occur and go to investigate what is happening, which sets off a series of horrific events with Akiko being targeted by a vampire.

Evil of Dracula (1974)

Shiraki ((Shin Kishida) accepts a position at an all-girls boarding school where he finds out the headmaster is not who he says he is and that the students, and him, are in trouble against the vampire.

All of the movies can be found on Tubi and AsianCrush as well as on Blu-Ray/DVD.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Audition (1999)

Today’s movie is not only one that I adore, but I think a must for any Japanese horror lover to watch at least once in their lives. Audition is based on a novel by Ryu Murakami and was given to Takashi Miike to adapt alongside screenwriter Daisuke Tengan on the heels of the success of Ringu. The film follows Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a widower who, with the help of a film producer friend, holds a mock casting audition to find his new wife.

The slowest of burns in all the best of ways, Audition sets up the story almost flawlessly. The death of his wife, his relationship with his son and dog play into the type of man he appears. The silent grief and loneliness that occurs after loss, and the need to move on but not knowing when is the right time sucks you into the story and quietly takes you on an unsuspecting journey. The movie spends most of its time in this space and sets up the turn beautifully in a way that is not only unexpected but sombering. Eihi Shiina’s performance as Asami is the breakthrough out of the movie, her acting is quiet and unassuming and packs much more of a punch at the climax of the movie in a way that makes you question everything that you’ve watched - forcing it into a new light and playing into the true terrors of gender roles, how they can affect people, and how a lot of it goes unnoticed because it is the norm in society. Audition is one of those films that inherently work better the less you know about it and allow Miike is able to take you on that journey without knowing what is going on. It’s a top-rated movie for a reason, and highly worth checking out.

Audition is currently streaming on Shudder, Tubi, and AsianCrush.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Kaal (2005)

Written and directed by Soham Shah, Kaal follows the story of a group of wildlife experts trying to collect information about a string of attacks and deaths that are attributed to a man-eating tiger.

Whether intentional or not, Kaal is a campy thriller that tries to be scary and doesn’t accomplish any of that with overacting and a generally terrible plot. The story takes a while to get going, and really only jumps into actual tension and intrigue towards the latter half. The problem with this is that the movie is over two hours long, forcing you to trudge through an hour of random bickering, not-so-great characters, and overdone jump scares that attribute nothing to the overall story. It takes a while to be somewhat interesting, and that’s only after the turn. The movie is just not good enough to dedicate that amount of time and falls flat even when it starts to get sort of interesting.

The tigers used in the film are real, opting to not use any sort of computer-generated ones, which is a slight bonus to the overall story. The movie spends a lot of its time in this area of trying to be a solid thriller, but unintentionally going over into the campy horror side and using the tigers worked a little bit more to ground a lot of it when dealing with those scenes, even if the rest of the movie didn’t follow suit. I wanted a fun creature feature but was left with a boring 2-hour movie, that didn’t go anywhere and takes itself well too seriously.

Kaal is currently streaming on Netflix.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Pulse (2001) vs Pulse (2006)

It’s the last paring of the month, and today we are focusing on the 2001 Japanese techno-horror and its 2006 US remake of the same name. The original is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a well-known director in the genre and known for a slew of horror films such as Cure (1997) and Creepy (2016). The remake was scripted by Wes Craven and directed by Jim Sonzero. The two movies sort of stay in the same storyline, but a bit of is changed, the major difference is that the original movie follows two storylines that eventually merge together. The original follows Michi (Kumiko Aso), a florist who finds her coworker dead, and Ryosuke (Haruhiko Kato), a student who finds his computer showing weird images and the two eventually unveil a slew of suicides that result from a ghost taking over the internet. The remake focuses mostly on Mattie (Kristen Bell) who finds her boyfriend dead and starts to investigate what happened.

Pulse has a relatively weird plot and premise, and it’ll inherently be a hard sell to translate to Western audiences, especially when you tie in the advancement of technology in Japan compared to the US at the time of both movies, but the remake does an okay job at recreating the atmosphere of the original all things considered and does try to lean into the techno-horror, whether they accomplish it or not. The original is a slow-burn mystery, heavy on the investigation, but has some creepy elements that help aid the mystery, more poetic and gothic than outright creepiness. The remake tries to focus more on concrete things, such as a more definitive definition of the ghosts and heightened thrills. A lot of the movie heavily plays into the use of internet technology specifically in the early 2000’s. Using suicide as the form of death isn’t just because it’s needed, it ties into what the internet was mostly used for when it first came out. There’s an overall feeling of “joining in the loneliness” which was present at that time in message boards and chatrooms. A lot of people were using the internet to connect with other people because they were feeling lonely in their daily lives and trying to create some sort of community with the people they were talking to online because they weren’t feeling that connection in real life. The original movie conveys this sentiment much more and focuses the plot to be driven by loneliness and the desperate need for some sort of community. Even the videos of those who passed convey that loneliness, the ghosts were alone in life and trying not to be alone in death as well by taking everyone with them.

I do think that the remake falls flat for most of the movie, however. Mostly because the slow build does not translate to what the remake is trying to do. It falls into the trap of trying to heighten and over exaggerate things more, focusing more on the horror that is presented, and not allowing the horror to be created from the tension and atmosphere. While the original focuses more on the mystique of what the ghost is, the US remake defines it a bit more and just loses the creativity of the original. I think a lot of that downfall is because the target audience was a lot younger, trying to pull in the audience from the teen horror craze, and ultimately dumbs down a lot of the story because of it, leaving behind a lot of the plot that is driven by loneliness which I found was the most unique and interesting part of the story and made the general plot make so much more sene. If you are trying to decide between the two, the original is worth finding and presents an overall creepier story that has great builds and a deeper storyline.

Pulse is currently available for rental on most services and on DVD, with the original available on Tubi.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Gonjiam Haunted Asylum (2018)

Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital was one of the most haunted places in South Korea, so it’s no wonder that a movie would be made based on the hospital. Starring a cast including Wi Ha Joon who has currently gotten notoriety playing the role of Jun Ho in Squid Game, the 2018 found footage film is directed by Jung Bum Shik. The film became a commercial success after its release, becoming the third most watched horror film in South Korea after A Tale of Two Sisters and Phone, and was released in the US a month after it's local release. (source) The movie follows a group of paranormal researchers filming for a livestream series, Horror Times, as they tour the hospital and end up discovering that there was some reality to all the local lore surrounding it.

The biggest thing that the movie does well is the setup of the tone and ramps up to some pretty scary and unsettling parts at the end of the film, forcing a journey of not necessarily wondering if something is going to happen, but when. We get a good variety of characters, and it adds to the enjoyment of the film. I find that a lot of found footage films can have some problems with keeping me invested in the group, normally because they try to put the most insufferable humans together, leaving me not caring about anyone and didn’t find that problem with this. Ha Joon’s character is an added bonus, as he stays behind in the camp watching everything unfold through the cameras with additional cameras that are set up around the tent to allow the viewer to see his reactions. There’s not much to read from his character from the very beginning, and it sets up a slight mystery on his role in the greater story. I also enjoyed the way they set up the camera work, the crew inside the hospital were strapped into cameras a la MTV’s Fear, and it was fun seeing the reactions from the various cameras that have various qualities, adding to not only the atmosphere but the erraticness of not being able to see everything that is going on.

While the ending kind of feels rushed, I wasn’t bothered by it. The general excitement of the build up to it was interesting and made for a fun watch. The movie does a fairly good job at setting up a pretty standard and predictable plotline from the very beginning, allowing the movie to be viewed much more for the fun of it rather than constantly focusing on every little thing and solving the puzzle. And sometimes, you just need a fun movie that you don’t have to think about.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum is currently streaming on Shudder and Tubi.

31 Days of Asian Horror: Hex (1980)

The Shaw Brothers’ take on the French film Les Diaboliques, Hex starts off as a fairly unsuspecting melodrama. A wealthy wife, Chan Sau Ying, has fallen ill and her abusive alcoholic husband Chun Yu is constantly making it worse, driving all their servants out until a new girl comes in, a daughter of a former servant who helped the wife’s family (Yi Wah). The husband brutally assaults Yi Wah which sets off a disastrous chain of events. The movie does a fairly good job at setting up the mystery and generally keeps it up through the reveals, but I felt that it hit a slump in the middle. That being said it was a decent watch and would recommend it to those who like supernatural plots that are more drama driven and depend less on gores and jump scares.

Hex is available for rent and on DVD.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: The Pool (2018)

It’s Creature Feature Friday and today’s pick had been sitting in my Shudder list for a bit too long. Written and directed by Ping Lumpraploeng, The Pool follows Day (Ken Theeradeth Wongpuapan), who was working on a film set using a pool. He stays after to clean up the set and becomes stranded in the empty pool with a crocodile and his injured girlfriend, Kay (Grace Ratnomnot Ratchiratham).

I really wanted to love this movie, I really did. It just was executed so poorly that it made it an exhausting watch. This movie is when every bad thing that you could ever think of comes perfectly together to target one singular person. And for a creature feature, that would normally work. The problem lies in that the film takes itself too seriously and tries too hard to be a solid thriller and wanting the audience to not think about how absurd everything that is going on is that it completely misses the mark. It wanted to capitalize on the realness of the event that the absurdity of this perfect storm was completely unrealistic. All that being said, I did like how the crocodile was portrayed. The goal of the movie was to ultimately focus on the pool being the big bad, and not the creature. It takes a while for you to realize that, and it is a good twist that the movie did well working that element well. The crocodile was as just a victim as Day and Kay were, and thus the actions of the crocodile were much less over the top and real.

Spoiler:

Another major misstep in the movie was the death of his dog. It was unnecessarily gruesome and placed at the end solely for a reaction to an audience. At this point it does fit with every absurd thing that could go wrong did, but it was an obvious ploy for reaction that was not warranted and did absolutely nothing for the plot, nor help with the horror. It was a ridiculous writing decision.

The Pool is streaming on Shudder and AsianCrush.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Ju-on: The Grudge (2002) vs The Grudge (2004)

It’s a Grudge kind of week, and after talking about the Netflix series back on Monday, it seemed only fitting to talk about the movie and its US remake for today’s pairing. It’s also the 19th birthday of Ju-On: The Grudge, as it premiered on October 18th at the Screamfest Film Festival, and the US remake’s 17th birthday is on the 22nd making it even more fitting that I celebrate with two posts about the franchise this week. It’s almost like a pre-planned this or something :)

Though the movies share some similarities, there were some differences and found that for some of the things I liked, the other movie didn’t quite live up to and vice versa. Since the series is fairly well known I figured for this review I would break it up into sections and comment on those specific points more than just an overall review. Note, there is a 2020 remake of the movie, but I haven’t watched it nor am I going to tie it or any of the other sequels and remakes into this post. The Grudge series is pretty extensive (it doesn’t even start with Ju-On: The Grudge), but I am only focusing on Ju-On: The Grudge vs the first US remake, The Grudge.

The two movies do share quite a bit in characteristics, but I do find that there are some noticeable differences in the two that really effected my general enjoyment. One being the setup of the curse. The US remake made the decision to set the film in Japan, but the curse happens almost exclusively on English-speakers which inherently forces the plot to not be able to take the turns that the original did. With the original we got to see the grudge as essentially the main character of the movie. It was what tied the stories and characters together. While the US remake sort of does this, it falls flat in the expansiveness of the curse. Because it’s limited to just picking English speakers, or that we’re really only hearing from them, the curse seems like it hasn’t been around for as long as it has and the permeation of the curse isn’t as effective. We also miss out on a lot of the way the original ties in the characters, purely on the fact that if you see a white person, you know it’s part of it and reveals end up falling flat.

The original is set up almost like anthology of sorts, and spans a bit more time. While I don’t think it does the best job working them in as cohesively as they should, it does have a better grasp at connecting people and showing what the curse is and how it operates. One of the main storylines that is cut out of the US remake that I really enjoy is the daughter of the detective, Izumi (Misa Uehara), who was the only one left alive after her father tried to set fire to the house while she and her friends were there. Her friends and her father died, leaving her to grieve and feel remorseful as the only living person, and the scenes we see of her add a new level to the curse that we don’t really get to see as well from the remake. There’s also a bit more emphasis on how it effects the survivors and how when the entity isn’t directly killing, it’s still doing harm. Taking this plot out of the movie effectively made Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) the main character of the movies when in the original Rika (Megumi Okina) is almost there for the purpose to bookend the movie and be the character that ties it all together, allowing the other characters a bit more emphasis and solidifying the grudge and house being the true main characters.

I do find that besides the breakdown of Izumi, most of the original isn’t quite as scary. The US remake works in the entity a bit more creepier, and the effects of the black blob work better as well as making some of the scares a little more quieter and mysterious. As I stated above, I had some issues with the cohesion of the acts in the original, and felt that the remake worked some of them in a bit better, establishing what was in the past more definitively than the original. I also felt the opening scene in the remake set the tone for the movie a bit more and generally liked how it worked into the story, as well as Gellar’s acting being a lot more convincing than Okinas. Whether it was a problem with sound effects being added in post production so she couldn’t sync up or her skill, a lot of the first time you see her on screen she never convinces you that things are scary. She doesn’t react to some noises and does others, and it took a bit more time for the tone of the movie to really settle in.

I feel like if you’ve been with me on this daily journey, you’ll already know what I’m going to comment on next, as I’ve said it in the prior two pairings I’ve done - the insistence of there being a happy ending plagues this one just like all the other remakes. I get it, it’s open purposefully to hopefully get more money with sequels but it’s exhausting and tiring. We’ve already seen multiple people die, I don’t expect this to end happily. And it shouldn’t. It’s a cop out that in turn sabotages all that you’ve set up with the grudge. The ending of the original just makes more sense, and I liked the way they accomplished it through a time jump where the character was caught off guard and had been removed from the events for a while was much more effective solidifying the permeation of the grudge and that you are never truly out of its grasp.

Ju-On: The Grudge can be found on a number of places to rent and streaming on Amazon Prime, and The Grudge is currently streaming on Pluto TV (it just was taken off of Prime last month).

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31 Days of Asian Horror: The Medium (2021)

The Medium was probably my most anticipated movie of the year, and luckily Shudder picked it up after it made its festival rounds. The movie was a joint Thai/Korean production, premiering at the Bucheon International Film Festival and released in Korean theaters on July 14th. Directed by Thai director Banjong Pisanthanakun (Shutter), and produced by Korean director Na Hong Jin who is known for the 2016 possession film, The Wailing, it was primed to be a great film.

The Medium follows a documentary crew as they travel to Isan in northeastern Thailand to document the life of a local shaman, Nim (Sawanee Utoomma). While there the crew notices how strange her niece, Ming (Narilya Gulmongkolpech), has been acting and starts to focus their attention on her increasing outbursts and aggression, thinking that they might be witnessing her possession by the spirit of Bayan, an ancestral God that has been possessing women in the family for generations, and who currently inhabits Nim.

We see most of the movie through the lens of the documentary crew, as a pretty polished film. The focus of the film, even when we start to see Ming develop symptoms, is that of the family and their practice and it allowed for an interesting look into the culture of the religion which I think enhanced the viewing. A lot of movies like this get lost culturally when you don’t have any basis on the religion or the practices, and the movie allowed for there to be ‘learning’ points without stopping the momentum. While the movie takes a bit to get to some of the scarier parts, I felt that there was a lot of subtle horror that was slowly worked in well through Nim’s character and seeing her at a loss for what to do and her potential loss of faith. It’s a quiet and uncomfortable scare that is sad as you watched her struggle to figure out why this was happening, and the destruction of her family that has already seen so much.

Narilya’s portrayal of Ming is fantastic throughout the film. Her descent into madness caused by her possession was creepy and naturally intensified as the movie progressed. The moments she’s discussing her despair and the uncertainty about what is going on and the haunting images in her dreams was terrifying and only further was helped as she was able to accurately show the subtle differences when the evil spirit was possessing her and when it was Ming struggling to keep it out.

I really enjoyed the movie and had a combination of moments I look for in my horror. Along with my love of slow quiet burns, the cinematography was gorgeous and the landscape only helped further my immersement in what was going on.

The Medium is currently streaming on Shudder.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: House (1977)

There’s no real good way to explain what House is. In the very simplest summary, it’s the story of a girl whose father has remarried. Saddened by that news she and a group of her friends go to visit her aunt - her late mother’s sister - when things go awry. But House is much more than that. It takes you on a weird acid-trip ride that really can not be expressed in words, it just needs to be experienced. Director Obayashi Nobuhiko was asked to do the movie as a response to the popularity of Jaws, which had also been a huge hit in Japanese cinemas. The film studio Toho wanted to find a relatively unknown creator and see if they could capitalize on the newfound talent creating not only a hit but a potential star out of the director. While Obayashi was developing the style of the movie, he talked to his daughter and was inspired by her ideas and own horror stories as a child and decided to incorporate them into the film.

House has a weird off-the-wall flair that is a combination of Obayashi being inspired by Alice in Wonderland, with his love of art-house and playing around with effects. The movie is filmed as if from the point of view of a child - fantastical and nonsensical, devoid of reality. The movie spends most of its time living in a dream-like state that looks straight out of a children’s book. Combine that with his daughter’s stories, such as futon monsters or creepy clocks at night, it’s wacky and unpredictable. Most of the time it doesn’t make sense, but that’s what makes it unique. It truly is a reflection of what scared you when you were younger paired with an underlying theme of dispair, sadness, and grief - all that has turned into anger from the constantly lingering side effect of unexpected loss and war which was something very close to the director. Obayashi was born in Hiroshima Prefecture and was seven when the atomic bomb was dropped.

“All of my close childhood friends died because of the bomb, so I wanted to write a fantasy with the atomic bomb as a theme.” - “Constructing a House” DVD commentary.

House, in a way, is about the parallels of the children who live in a very carefree way, and the aunt who saw firsthand the horrors of the war.

House can be found on the Criterion Channel, but also on DVD.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Perfect Blue (1997)

Directed by Satoshi Kon and based on the manga Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis, Perfect Blue follows Mima Kirigoe, a member of an idol group who leaves to pursue a career in acting and in doing so changes her image. After leaving the group she becomes threatened and left fearing she is being stalked by an unknown fan who is potentially murdering people around her. As the film progresses Mima spirals out of control with the weight of her new image and the threat.

Perfect Blue is technically much more thriller than it is horror, but the rollercoaster the story takes you on has some pretty horrific moments which lead you on a mind-bending journey. The film is able to create incredible tension and paces it perfectly, keeping you guessing on what is actually happening and what might be fantasy. We stay in the perspective of a younger female who has been constantly in the spotlight since she was younger and manipulated by her fans needing to know her every move. Her acting career, which requires her to be more sexual to appeal to a different set of fans and break from her clean image, creates another layer to the film’s tension as we feel firsthand the pressures of a young female in the entertainment industry.

I hadn’t rewatched Perfect Blue in a long time, with my first viewing of it back in high school in the early 2000s and it’s still one of my favorite animated movies. The film still surprisingly stands in today’s society, especially with the prevalence of the idol industry starting to become more mainstream with Korea’s influence in Western media. Japan’s idol system has been around for a while, and the movie serves as a great commentary on the pressures and societal issues that young girls face being in that system. The movie takes you on a wild ride and it’s gripping the entire time. I highly recommend picking it up.

Perfect Blue is available for rental on most sites and on DVD/Blu-Ray.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Psycho Shark (2009)

I’ve been fairly lucky with the movies that I picked to review for this month that I hadn’t seen yet, but then Psycho Shark came. Nicknamed Jaws in Japan, I had so much hope for this movie. I didn’t think it would be the best, but I really wanted to find a fun and campy creature feature and I don’t think I can describe to you how far off this movie hit. It’s almost a waste of a day to devote a review to it, but if I can make sure someone doesn’t fall for it like I did, then my work is done. I can excuse a lot of things with creature features. I can be ok when the creatures defy physics or the acting is bad. The CGI can be terrible and the movie can have no plot. But somehow, Psycho Shark saw that as a challenge and test my patience. It had so much potential in the beginning, I thought that they would play with the found footage or that there was going to be some play on Psycho because of the name. And just like every other thing about this movie, it let me down. You don’t even see the shark until the last ten minutes of the movie.

Yes. You spend the entire movie waiting for the shark, and sans a dream sequence where we see a shark 3/4 of the way through the movie, you only see it once. I can’t even summarize what goes on during the rest of the movie because nothing goes on. A girl scared and shocked replays a video over and over, girls dance and shower in bikinis…there’s a beach?

Psycho Shark is on Tubi but even for free it’s not worth it. Thankfully lovely people on YouTube did God’s work and clipped the shark scene at the ending so you can watch it and not have to sit through the entire thing. I admit it’s a pretty enjoyable scene, but you literally have to wait for the entire film to get there and it’s just not the payoff you want or need.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Thirst (2009)

Today’s Thirsty Thursday offering is the 2009 South Korean vampire horror film directed by Park Chan Wook (Oldboy, Snow Piercer), Thirst. Starring Song Kang Ho as a Catholic priest who turns into a vampire after a failed medical experiment, Thirst is about lust, desire, and the consequences of your actions when one is torn between what they want and their faith. The film is loosely based on the 1867 novel Therese Raquin by Emile Zola.

Thirst is a different take on a vampire film and focuses on a different direction in the genre. It takes you on an unsuspecting ride that focuses much more on Sang Hyun’s (Song) inner struggle with his change and the actions he has to do to satiate who he is as a monster than gore or fantasy. Kim Ok Bin plays the literal manifestation of the devil on his shoulder and does a fantastic job. I do think the movie takes a bit too long to get there, but in the end I thought it was a solid movie and definitely suggest picking it up.

Thirst is currently available for rent/purchase on most major platforms.

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