Retribution

I avoided watching this movie for a loooong time. For some reason, I had seen so many Asian horror flicks, I drew back from renting anything revenge-related. I couldn't hold my curiosity for long. After a couple of months sans gore, I went to the video rental store, picked up the DVD case, and went home feeling like I had accomplished something. Alas, my Asian horror movie itch has been satiated and I'm once again begging for more.

Retribution follows a detective's confusing murder investigation. People are drowning in salt water and the authorities can't name a suspect, or a body of water. When the main character starts to doubt his innocence, he realizes something funny is going on. There must be a vengeful entity behind all the gore, but who is it? Or better yet, what is it?

Because I watched this without knowing what to expect, I've decided to give you the same privilege to make the whole experience a whole lot more exciting. I give this film 4 shrieks. It really tickled my horror bone.

Rebirth of a Dead Blog

It's impressive...
and confusing...
I haven't posted anything on this blog since November 2007 and I still get visitors. I checked the site stats today and was flabbergasted by the numbers. I've been considering it for a while and maybe it's time for me to continue on my Asian Horror quest, whatever it may be.
Horror movies...
Horror culture...
Horror stories...
mixed with really bad special effects and bad actors make for some really fun times.

This entry is just a message to all readers that the blog shall soon be reborn.

Asian Horror Montage

Thanks to BlackCerenity, we have a pretty wicked music video featuring some of the best scenes in the Asian Horror genre. Like most of the clips posted in the blog, there's some pretty graphic stuff in here, so make sure your 5-year-old kid/sister/cousin/neighbor/grandkid/nephew/whatever isn't taking a peek from behind. For those wondering, the song is "Bodies like Sheep" by A Perfect Circle.

The awesome scenes come from the following movies:
Arang
Reincarnation
The Red Shoes
Shutter
Phone
Cello
The Curse
Mizuchi
Cinderella
Ju-on 2 (Grudge 2)
APT
The Eye 1
The Eye 2
One Missed Call 1
One Missed Call 2
Bunshinsaba
Doll Master
To sir with Love
The Wig
Wishing Stairs
Voice
Sky High

Uzumaki Madness

Uzumaki means spiral in Japanese. The movie takes place in a little town somewhere in Japan where people's behavior is becoming extremely alarming. Little by little folks begin to obsess about the perfect, hypnotizing, circling line. As the delusions progress, their identities are completely erased and the victims fall prey to gruesome and bizarre deaths.

Understanding A Twisted Mind

The following is an interview with Chan-wook Park taken from Fazed:

"Old Boy – New Talent"

MA: In Oldboy you return to the theme of revenge that you explored so memorably in Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance. Why this fascination?

“When I’m insulted I cannot vent my anger in front of people, and the anger has been accumulating in me, so I wanted to express that through cinema. But if I wanted to express this to my complete satisfaction, to make violence within a good film then it gives me a feeling of guilt. At the same time I have to express the dark side of an act of violent vengeance, even if the revenge is for a good reason.”

MA: Do you, as the director of the film, identify with any of the characters more than any others?

“Woo-jin is almost like a film director and scriptwriter and an actor at the same time. So I made this film and gave the role to Woo-jin with this in mind. This was edited out of the final film, but there was a scene in which Woo-jin practices his duel with Oh Dae-su in the final countdown. We shot a scene where Woo-jin practices his speech, practices what to say in this version and that version. In reality when someone speaks to somebody else, sometimes they stutter and sometimes it pours forth, and sometimes they have to think what to say next. But when I directed that scene I asked Woo-jin to do it exactly as written. Woo-jin in this film is an actor, but also a film director who controls the life of Oh Dae-su to the finest detail. Through this film I’m expressing the God-like nature of a film director, which makes the revenge against Woo-jin an act of rebellion against God.”

MA: There is a very careful and considered design element to the film, isn’t there?

“Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance was rather minimalistic and dry, so I wanted to make something more stylish with this. So with the pattern on the wallpaper, for instance, I wanted to give the feeling of imprisonment, of claustrophobia, so that even when he’s released and when he walks about the streets it follows him all the time. The personal belongings of Woo-jin came about because I wanted to keep the image of fragments of a mirror, broken shards. Through music I wanted to express a vortex of emotion, in a waltz style. I wanted to express the idea of the characters going round and round.”

MA: Isn’t the story based on a Japanese manga?

“I’d heard that, but I only actually read it when a producer suggested I make this film. Actually nothing remains of the manga in the final film except for a particular characteristic in the storyline. In most other stories the perpetrator runs away and disappears, but in this story the perpetrator appears before the victim. He practically invites the victim to come to him. That element remains strongly in my film. I even tried to enhance it.”

MA: Do you ever worry about going too far in your depictions of violence, especially in scenes of tooth extraction, or a tongue being cut out?

“I didn’t show any of that on screen, I never showed the tongue being cut out either, the camera moves from the eye to the hand, to the closing of the hand – that’s as far as I would go. Most people imagine that they’ve seen it, because when the camera moves from the eye to the hand they’re watching it through their fingers, and they think they’ve seen something. So I’m accused for nothing.”

MA: Is that part of the fun of it, manipulating audience emotion in that way?

“It’s more interesting to me to pull away from the scene, showing other parts of the body, expressing it through a sound effect. That interests me more.”

MA: Do your films attract criticism back home for the violence they contain?

“There is some criticism from religious groups. We have leniency for expressing violence, because we’ve gone through a period in which violence was all too familiar under our military dictatorship.”

MA: Oldboy is already being prepared for its American remake – is there anything you would particularly like preserved from your own film?

“When I bought the rights to make this film there were no strings attached, I had complete freedom so there’s nothing the remake has to take from my film. I want to give them the same freedom.”

MA: You cast Gang Hye-jung in the crucial role of Mido, in only her second film. What was it about her that appealed?

“That was important, the reason being that if I had cast a well known actress for that role people would immediately be curious about the relationship between Choi Min-sik and this actress. But their true relationship has to be hidden. And also there is a lovemaking scene, which famous actresses in Korea don’t like to do. Even if I had wanted to cast someone more famous no-one would have done it.”

MA: Is humour an important element in these films for you?

“It’s very important to me, but it goes hand in hand with fear and sadness. I don’t mean as a flip flop of humour and sadness or humour and fear, but they do go together. What I hoped for was that the more frightening it was the funnier it would get.”

MA: The emotions of horror and humour are actually quite similar, aren’t they?

“It’s one thing being a particular genre with these two elements, as we live our everyday lives and we go through sadness and feel frightened it’s serious to us. But if somebody else looks at it he might spot a funny side to it. In the editing suite, when we’re we editing a scene where an actor or an actress cries or is in great distress, if you freeze the frame sometimes it looks as though they’re laughing.”

MA: So does that suggest the film really comes together for you in the initial design or in the editing suite?

“It is in the blueprint from the moment I write the first line, because that’s the purpose of the film.”

MA: And now you’re working on another film with vengeance as the theme, aren’t you?

“The third film in the trilogy will be about a character who longs for salvation and atonement rather than anger, vengeance and violence.”

Note: The third movie is Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Bloody Bear

In "She Bear," a crazy, hairy, dirty woman living in a tunnel terrorizes passersby at night. Apparently, she enjoys collecting bloody fingers and cheap jewelry inside her crusty teddy bear.
The short movie (about 15 minutes) is part of the J-Horror Anthology: Legends, a compilation of stories based on Japanese folklore.

To watch

Promising violent and grotesque Asian Horror movies, difficult to find in your local movie rental store:

The Matrimony: A man, his wife, and his dead fiancée are thrown together in a love triangle where possession leads the adulterous way to a threesome.

Kill Devil: A group of teenagers are left in an isolated island in the year 2025. They have no clue how they got there, but they're being watched and one by one, they're falling prey to sharp objects. Ouch!

.Face: A forensic facial reconstructionist feels compelled to put a face to his latest skull and in the process of doing so connects his daughter's heart transplant to the mad soul without a face.

Heirloom: A rich family commits mass suicide and haunts the couple who moves into their mansion.

Dream Cruise

If you are hit in the head and drowned by your adulterous husband while spending quality time in his love boat, does that mean that'll automatically make you green, bloody, and slimy when you come back for revenge? Apparently, in Asian horror movies, the texture of your skin becomes slimy goo once you're murdered and thrown into a body of water. 

Masters of Horror has recently caught up with the trend. In Norio Tsuruta's "Dream Cruise," a woman and her husband go on a fun boat ride along with the American lawyer (who's having an affair with the wife). Amidst the soap-opera drama, a green, very dead ex-wife climbs on board for revenge. The movie is cheap and cheesy, but there's something about the consistency of a slimy complexion that makes the uneventful 59 mins worth the watch.

For the Intelectual Asian Horror Gawker

Why crave for gore? Why do we like disturbing horror flicks? Not everybody has the stomach to see Asian Horror films, yet the success of the American remakes of The Ring and The Grudge suggest we actually share a lot with our Asian counterparts.

Even though most of the films featured in this blog are tagged with controversy, they all share a huge level of success in Asia and surprisingly numerous fans in the Western World. Apparently, society is strangely bipolar concerning horror films. The Eastern movies tend to push the envelope a bit further than the typical, pre-digested American competitors.

Pam Grady perfectly described the difference between the two incarnations of the genre in the title of her article: “Asian Horror has more guts than its Western counterparts. What a shocker!” She sits with writer Patrick Galloway to discuss his book “Asia Shock” and allow him to vent a little about his frustration with American remakes.

Here’s are some other sources that can help you sort out your morbid obsession with gore and violence; or alternatively tantalize your intellect by analyzing the macabre fixation with sadism and carnage. (No matter how you put it you’ll need to close your mouth and call your therapist to get over that train scene from “Suicide Club” or the bus stop scene from “The Eye 2”)

Good Sources:
Asia Shock
Evil Dread
Fangoria
Interview with Kendall Phillips

Takashi Strikes Again

Gozu is an extremely confusing movie with excessive violence, twisted imagery, and a confusing plot. It's obviously a "must-see" for those who live for this type of gore. There's some awkward sexual content in it, but you've already seen a man cutting off his tongue. I tip my imaginary hat in Takashi Miike's general direction.
Warning: It's a fake dog. This blog does not sponsor animal cruelty.