31 Days of Asian Horror: Shudder Picks

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Shudder is one of my favorite places for streaming horror, and while they don’t have many international titles compared to the rest of the selection, they do tend to pick up some good ones. I checked out what they currently have in their lineup and picked my top picks to check out that are currently available.

+ 0.0 MHz (Korea - 2019)

Staring Eun Ji (of APINK), this movie follows a college supernatural club that decides to stay the night at a house that is believed to be haunted and document their findings while they sleep. It’s a sort of campy trip with the familiar setup of kids doing things that lead to bad choices, a classic in horror but I enjoyed it and is definitely a good choice if you are into the supernatural/leaning towards slasher-type movies. Yoo Seon Dong directs this, if you are a fan of the second Death Bell or the drama Uncanny Counter, you might want to check this out.

+ Dead & Beautiful (Taiwan/Netherlands - 2021)

Dead & Beautiful is a co-production between Taiwan and the Netherlands. A group of hot, annoying rich kids turn into hot, annoying rich kid vampires. Technically this more supernatural/thriller than horror but I’m letting it slide for this post. It also has vampires and we all love those.

+ Evil Dead Trap (Japan - 1988)

If you are in need of a true, gory slasher look no further. A TV station sends a crew out to an abandoned place that is said to have been the set for snuff film and things go crazy.

+ Exhuma (Korea - 2024)

I’m going to make you work for this one to know what I thought about it by checking out a full podcast episode on it. Do you love shamans and letting out evil spirits? I think this might be a winner for you.

+ Lingering (Korea - 2022)

Are creepy supernatural buildings your thing with a side of weird kids? Lingering might be the movie for you. Yoo Mi's mother unexpectedly dies leaving her to care for her young sister she ends up at her mom's best friend's lake house and weird shit happens.

+ The Medium (Thailand - 2021)

I wrote a whole non-spoiler review of this one that you can find here, here’s the synopsis: 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.

+ Metamorphosis (Korea - 2019)

An evil spirit invades a family and they all start to turn on each other. The mom is played by Jang Young Nam, who is just always a good choice when you want eery and creepy.

+ Mon Mon Mon Monsters (Taiwan - 2017)

Another film I reviewed during the last 31 Days, this one was a complete shock to me. I didn’t think I’d like it as much when I clicked play but it won me over. I

+ One Cut of the Dead (Japan - 2017)

The only thing you should know going into this movie is that it’s about a film crew shooting a zombie film that just goes…bizarre. It’s so good. I loved it so much.

+ Warning: Do Not Play (Korea - 2019)

I feel like this is one of the first movies I watched on Shudder. It falls into the cursed movie genre that Asian horror loves, with a film maker trying to find a banned film to help her with her own when things go wrong. Classic caper.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Dumplings (2004)

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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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100 (Asian) Horror Movies in 92 Days

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This year I did the Spooky Sarah Says challenge to watch 100 horror movies in 92 days. The challenge started in August and ran till the end of October. The rules were simple: watch 100 new (to you) movies during the time period. When I decided to do the challenge, I was in the middle of watching a lot of Korean horror and had just started planning my October posts. Because I knew that I was already going to be watching a bunch of Asian horror, I decided to do the challenge with a focus on only counting Asian horrors. I started off just tracking movies, but as I got into October I feared that the challenge was forcing me to focus on movies too much, and added tracking dramas into the mix. In the end, it didn’t really work out and I barely touched dramas. Such is life.

I thought it would be fun go through the movies and dramas I watched and check out some of the stats on them to see how the challenge went (besides whether I completed it or not). I also think it would give a greater look into what I chose, and may help in the movies that I choose from here on out. I didn’t try to vary up my content that much, I was mostly concerned with the number, but towards the end when I was less concerned about hitting 100 I started to really try to expand what movies I was watching.

The Stats

-My final count was 116. 8 of those being dramas. My starting baseline for this is 108 movies, 8 dramas.

-The oldest movie I watched was the 1958 Mansion of the Ghost Cat, from Japan. This was a movie I had no clue about before this challenge and one that I randomly picked up. It was a YouTube suggestion after another movie I had been watching and decided to give it a try after realizing that I was enjoying a lot of the older Japanese horror movies I was encountering. The newest movie I watched was Ouija Japan. Its premiere date is listed as October 19th, and I watched the day it dropped on Amazon Prime.

The years in between the oldest and newest least of my worries when picking, mostly because it would be the thing I have the least control of or care due to my options to watch and not having a budget to buy or rent new movies. I did want to see if I somehow favored a year. I assumed that they would mostly be older just purely because I was watching movies on streaming services and assume those would be the cheaper to get rights for thus populating my options. At a tie for first place with 9 entries each was 2009 & 2016. I don’t know how 2009 got to be so high - maybe it was just a good year for horror to come to the box office? I would like to dive deeper into this when I get the time, I would assume that the previous years had popular box office hits that reignited the passion to ride on that popularity or focus distribution rights budget on them. 11 out of the 33 years represented have only one movie or drama watched within them, a much higher number than I would have expected.

-I’m not much of a fan of rating things, and thus rate things extremely weird. Since most of the time I’m rating dramas, I've gotten used to my rating score over there. Problem is…it doesn’t necessarily translate to movies. With dramas I drop them and not rate if I do, that means that I rarely will have a low-rated drama and I’ve worked that into my rating system. With movies, I rarely drop due to their length being a smaller time restraint. I did want to include some stats on my ratings, though. Generally, my rating thought process was 5’s: perfect, 4/4.5’s: all-around great, 3/3.5’s: pretty good 2/2.5’s: not the best, but didn’t hate everything, 1/1.5’s: mostly sucked, .5’s definitely sucked.

Here’s the breakdown of each rating:

  • .5: 7

  • 1: 6

  • 1.5: 7

  • 2: 19 (1 drama)

  • 2.5: 11 (1 drama)

  • 3: 30 (2 dramas)

  • 3.5: 13 (1 drama)

  • 4: 21 (2 dramas)

  • 4.5: 2 (1 drama)

  • 5: 0

I didn’t rate any movie or drama a perfect 5, but I did give a 4.5 to one movie and one drama. One Cut of the Dead was the movie. It is the best movie that I watched during this time, and truly one I had on my watchlist for way too long. If you haven’t watched it yet, don’t read anything about it and watch it knowing nothing. The drama was The Guest. Fantastic drama that was also one I kept putting off not because I didn’t want to watch it, I just didn’t make the time to.

Some other interesting data from my ratings: 2 out of the 3 Indonesian films I watched got .5 stars, the lowest rating based on percentage. All three of the top dramas were Korean. Korea also dominates the 4 stars section. I gave out the most 3 stars (26%) which roughly translates to middle of the road in my enjoyment level, fairly average but possibly had some better than average aspects. I also gave out a fairly large percentage of 2 stars, about 17% of the movies. I was kind of expecting my 1.5/.5 ratings to be a bit higher than they actually turned out. Not because I think I am a ruthless rater, but simply because of the movie pool I was picking from. A lot of the time I would turn on movies at random on Tubi leading to more of a gamble if the movie was good or not.

-Out of all the data I was most interested in seeing was my breakdown of movies based on location. Again, I didn’t try to vary this at the beginning between the Korean Summer Horror posts and the 31 Days of Asian Horror posts constraints. Here’s the breakdown:

  • Cambodia: 1

  • China: 1

  • Hong Kong: 8

  • India: 4 (2 dramas)

  • Indonesia: 3

  • Japan: 37 (1 drama)

  • Korea: 37 (3 dramas)

  • Laos: 2

  • Mongolia: 1

  • Philippines: 3

  • Singapore: 1 (1 drama)

  • Taiwan: 5

  • Thailand: 9 (1 drama)

  • Vietnam: 3

I pretty much knew that Korea and Japan would make it to the top of the list without guessing. I had the most options from those accessible, and the most that were already on my watchlist. Hong Kong came in fourth, which was the most surprising out of the group. I had some movies lined up because Hong Kong had the most options in vampire movies (a theme for some of my blog posts), but most of the ones I picked up were completely random. Most of the movies from Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines were from Netflix which I have found seems to be the platform’s favorite area to pick up Asian horror content from.

I know this data is probably only interesting to me, but I had fun trying to figure out some of the stats and it gave me a good look at how I did. I think it’s an interesting perspective on my viewing habits, and I think in the future will help me try to diversify my viewing a bit more. I might do a break down like this for the dramas that I watched this year to give me a greater look at my drama watching.

If you want to see the full list of movies and dramas, check out my Letterboxd list here, and while you’re there follow me so we can be friends!

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November Premieres

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It feels like so long since I’ve just done a regular post that’s not a review! November has a lot of dramas premiering, and a lot that I’m personally excited for. It’s going to be a heavy watching month for me, especially with some other dramas that premiered during October.

-The supernatural romance Thai drama Prajan See Daeng will be out today, the 1st, about a boy born cursed to turn into a tiger-man during the red moon, and his journey to try to find the only way he can break the curse.

-Not a new movie, but the 2020 Korean horror The Closet will be available on Shudder today. The film follows a widower who enlists the help of an exorcist to help him find his daughter after she goes missing.

-On the 3rd the cdrama Wisher premieres on iQIYI. The sci-fi thriller tells the story of a mysterious organization that creates an app that allows users to make a wish - if they do the assigned task. It is part of iQIYI’s Light On Series, iQIYI produced dramas that are in the suspense genre.

-Also coming out on the 3rd in celebration of Apple TV+ being available in South Korea is the sci-fi thriller Dr. Brain - the first original Korean drama on the platform. It’s director/writer is Kim Jee Woon, known for being the director of the movie I Saw the Devil. I have high hopes for this one.

-While Dead and Beautiful may not be a by-the-book definition of an Asian horror film, it does follow an almost entirely Asian cast and is partially set in Taipei. A group of friends bored with their socialite lives go out for the night…and end up vampires. It’s been making the rounds at film festivals but will be streaming on Shudder starting on the 4th.

-Another older movie, the 2014 Japanese movie The World of Kanako will drop on Shudder on the 5th. The movie follows a former detective who uncovers a secret about his teenage daughter.

-Kdrama Happiness begins on the 5th about a deadly virus that spreads throughout a city, and the apartment building that has been sealed off from it. It looks super interesting, and the team behind it is really good.

-The webdrama Find Me if You Can will premiere on the 9th about a four-way love…square? And a stalker who is obsessed with the main female lead. The drama will star almost the entirety of the kpop group ASTRO.

-Korean horror drama Hellbound drops all of its episodes on Netflix on the 19th. The drama is about people being able to hear predictions on how they’ll die and are able to see the death angel in front of them. Director/writer Yeon Sang Ho is known for Train to Busan. This is one of my top dramas this month.

-Taiwanese drama Light the Night will be streaming part one on Netflix on the 26th. Set in 1988 Taipei Red Light District about the lives, love, and struggles of the club madam, and their hostess ladies.

-On the 27th the kdrama One Ordinary Day premieres. The drama is about the murder of a woman, and the person in jail who might not be the culprit. It is a remake of the BBC series Criminal Justice.

No Date:

-There hasn’t been much movement or information on the kdrama Goosebumps after some casting news, so there might be a good chance this one won’t be out this month. It’s directed by Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum director Jung Bum Shik so I’m interested and hopeful it’ll appear.

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

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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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