Jack-o-lanterns, Trick or Treat, Costume parties …
These are the common scenes seen during the 31st of October to celebrate an annual holiday called Halloween. A holiday which rooted way back were Ancient Celts believe that this is the time of the year where the boundary between the living and the dead becomes slim which results to spirits visiting the living world.
Today, people celebrate this holiday by commemorating their departed loved ones and by allowing themselves to be scared by wearing scary costumes, doing ghost hunting and probably the most common, by watching horror flicks.
But if you are a person, who doesn’t have a single idea on what to watch this Halloween, most movie addicts would most likely suggest to you to watch horror movies from Japan, Korea and Thailand which are reputable on making guaranteed scary horror movies.
If you dare, you may try the following movies:
DEATHBELL
They say that the school serves as a person’s second home yet in this story, horrible killings happen in a private school by some kidnappers who kidnap students and kill them according to their ranking in midterm exam scores. This crime could only be stopped if the main characters were able to solve the puzzles given to them within a time limit in Death Bell.
INUGAMI
From celebrated Japanese director, Masato Harada, is a taut horror-drama about Akira, an art teacher who has recently transferred to the middle school in the village of Omine. After arriving in Omine, Akira quickly realizes that this place is quite unique. For the most part, this settlement has remained unchanged for hundreds of years. The residents are superstitious and believe that the fate of the town lies with the women of the Bonomiya family. These women are the guardians of the Inugami, a pack of ancient wolf spirits who supernaturally rule over the town. Since these Inugami wreak havoc on the town when unchecked, the Bonomiya women have been made the scapegoat for all of the town’s problems. When the outsider Akira falls for Miki Bonomiya, the entire village is in an uproar.
RINGU
Ringu is a Japanese film which revolves about a cursed video which shows random yet disturbing images which will cause death to whoever will watch it after a week. Though this film is not enhanced digitally by special effects, this horror movie was a success and became a hit not only in Japan, but in different countries as well which even lead to a Hollywood remake of this particular film.
JU-ON
More known as “The Grudge” Ju-on is another Japanese film which focuses about curse from a killed housewife in Nerima. It said that a curse is made by people who die with grudge or with deep anger. And in this case, as Rika Nishina, a social worker is assigned to a certain house, the story now begins as the story unfolds that this certain house is actually cursed by a housewife killed by her husband as he suspects the wife to be cheating from him. And now as the spirit of the housewife and his son lives in the house, one who enters this establishment is bound to be killed by this vengeful spirits.
SHUTTER
Shutter A Thai film which tells a story about a photographer and his girlfriend who were able to observe strange figures present in photos after running over a female by their car one night as they came from their friend’s dinner. Not only that, they were also mysterious deaths by their friends that is happening as well as the unexplainable neck pain by the photographer. As the girlfriend becomes intrigued by the victim, she pursued to investigate about her more and realized that this particular victim is directly related to his boyfriend. Are the photos the ghost’s way of seeking for help? Will she stop haunting them as the girlfriend could solve the mystery?
THE EYE
This film revolves about a blind lady who was able to regain sight after having a successful eye transplant. And as she enjoys the gift of sight, later she recognizes that alongside of having that sight, she as well starts to see figures not seen by normal human eyes. And as these unusual sights made her realize that this somehow foresees horrible deaths, she and a doctor’s friend decided to know more about the owner of the eye and there they fled to Thailand to discover the story of the owner of the eye and what made the spirit of the eye’s owner restless.
MEAT GRINDER
Does it sound gory enough for you?
Meat Grinder is a recent horror film from Thailand shows a story about an ordinary girl who cooks and sells noodles in a pushcart as a source of living. And as a persons struggle with this difficult life, what can make a person successful at this type of business … to formulate a secret recipe of course! And how does a human flesh as meat in your noodles sound like? Yum?
NOROI THE CURSE
Noroi the Curse is another Japanese film with the documentary-type of delivery, this movie follows the investigation of a journalist named Masafumi Kobayashi who receives a letter from a certain person requesting to investigate its neighbor. And from there, the journalist starts to visit the neighbor of the one who contacted him. And with this investigation, alongside with other seem-to-be unrelated events, they all then began to get connected with each other by a certain entity termed Kagutaba. And with the movie tagline, “Everybody dies,” how would a horror movie fanatic would dare to miss this?
EPITAPH
A Korean horror film set in 1979 as the protagonist named Park Jeong-nam reminisces his experiences way back at 1942, the time where the Korean nation was under the Japanese colony, as he browsed through an old photobook. There the movie shows that Park Jeong-nam at that time was bound to be married to a girl whom we never met, but this marriage was not pursued because his bride to be was already dead. Although the main character is Jeon-nam, two other stories were also unfold, one is the story of Asako, the only survivor of a car accident wherein all of her other family members were killed and starts to be haunted by ghosts and second, the story of a couple surgeon wherein the husband, Dong-won became suspicious of her own wife, In-yeong as he noticed that his wife had no shadow.
TALE OF TWO SISTERS
Tales of two sisters is Based from the title itself, the film is focused on a story between two sisters who experiences maltreatment from their step mom, Eun-Joo. As they both return from a mental institution, strange things happen and all of these unexplained events were blamed to them by their step mom. And to make things worse, their own father doesn’t do a thing for he never believed his own daughter’s accusation. And as for the audiences, the story will leave them the question, who is to blame for the unexplainable events that happened, the step mom or some other person or creature they don’t expect?
And from these different Asian horror movies, some common elements can be observed which lead to the success of these movies. One, is the element of ‘fear of the unknown’, where the main antagonist showed a little appearance or a not-so-detailed description of them which adds to the aura of mysteriousness to the film. Another is the ending where they usually will not end it to the typical ‘happy ending’ closure. As Asian horror movies will not give a very clear closure their endings, this also adds in making the story more mysterious, which will leave the audience thinking on the possibilities of how the story ended.
Though watching this type of movies is basically for entertainment, maybe we, the viewers should also think, what is the possible deeper meaning of these movies that the directors and writers want to convey to us? Are they any? Are they merely for the heck of scaring us and giving us chills to the spine? Well, to be honest, I’m not sure either of the answer to my own questions, so might as well start switching your DVD player on and watch those movies I suggested. Enjoy the view and Happy Halloween!
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