Like many other forms of music, media, and entertainment coming out of Japan in recent years, Japanese horror movies have distinguished themselves as their own genre. Per Rikumo, Horror is not unfamiliar to Japanese culture; traditional kabuki and methods of theatrical storytelling have consistently used ghosts and demons to make specific points about what they are trying to say. The potential origins of the ghost story in Japanese literature point back to 700 CE, so when the medium of film was invented, it simply was time to recreate these stories visually.
However, in recent years, the genre expanded to include movies like Godzilla, which came in 1954 as Japan recovered from World War II. Through the unique lens of contemporary horror movies in Japan, one can spot the nuanced aspects and characteristics that plague Japanese society today. Whether it is the breakup of a family or a vengeful ancestor coming back to enact revenge, there are lessons to be taken in the action. These are the best Japanese horror movies released in the 2000s.
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6 Gozu
Cinema Epoch
Released in 2003, Gozu combines the classic elements of a ghost story with the Japanese mafia, also known as the Yakuza, and some surrealist comedy. At first glance, Gozu may seem like something bizarre, the inner depths of a madman’s mind. After a mentally unstable Yakuza member kills a small dog, his boss decides it is about time to eliminate him. The assassin selected for the job moves in for the kill, but discovers he has been placed in a strange series of events with the oddest people he will ever meet, fulfilling some pretty dark sexual fantasies.
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5 Three…Extremes
Applause Pictures
This anthology film is a co-production among three different countries: China, Japan, and South Korea. Three directors teamed up to make this: Park Chan-wook, Fruit Chan, and Takashi Miike. The three stories are titled Dumplings, Cut, and Box, and each narrative has a different cultural take on the concept of horror and how it’s utilized in particular contexts. In one story, an old woman buys aborted fetus dumplings to try and fulfill her pursuit of timeless beauty, but the other two stories feature a director and a writer stuck in rather unfortunate situations. All three directors put their own unique flairs into each section, making this a unique anthology movie.
4 Ju-On: The Grudge
Pioneer LDC
The third in the popular Ju-On movie series, Ju-On: The Grudge helped bring more mainstream attention to the franchise and even spawned an American remake: The Grudge. A man murders his entire family in their home, but this sparks a curse that affects anyone who steps into their home. Anyone who enters will be cursed, and wherever they die, the curse will spread. When a new family moves into the original home, they find themselves falling victim to the curse’s effects, creating a destructive domino effect that ripples onto many other people’s lives.
3 Pulse
Daiei Film
Ever since screening at Cannes Film Festival, Pulse has achieved cult status. The storyline splits into two different stories, but it is tied together by the premise that ghosts are able to invade the real world through technology. The first story features a young woman who has just moved to Tokyo, but one day one of her coworkers commits suicide. When they investigate the computer disk he was working on, hints of paranormal activity start to emerge. In the second story, a student signs up for a new Internet provider and discovers his computer automatically starts going to spooky websites, setting this story up to evolve even more.
2 Noriko’s Dinner Table
Mother Ark Co. Ltd
Noriko’s Dinner Table is technically the sequel to another cult classic in Japanese horror: Suicide Club. The first movie, Suicide Club, centers itself around the suicide of 54 school girls at the same time in a Tokyo train station, but Noriko’s Dinner Table tries to fill in the gaps that the first movie left behind. Centered on the themes that are consistently becoming issues for teenagers even today — isolation, the Internet, and suicide — the characters in Noriko’s Dinner Table provide critical context.
1 Dark Water
Oz Films
Dark Water was inspired by a short story collection by Japanese author Koji Suzuki. A woman in the midst of divorce proceedings moves into a new apartment with her daughter, who is in kindergarten, and when a leak in their ceiling continues, she has had enough. She attempts to try and contact the apartment above them to see what is going on, but soon after, a vengeful ghost begins to haunt the mother and daughter. As the mother gathers clues about the ghost’s identity, more elements of this story come out to play in the most devastating ways.
