B R E A K I N G N E W S A T T H E S TA R P H O E N I X . C O M

SECTION C FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2011

ARTS LIFE &GHOULISH MUSIC A GREAT FIT FOR HALLOWEEN. C4

LARISSA LIEPINSPOSTMEDIA NEWS

T his Halloween, take a break from your chainsaw massacres and nightmares on

Elm Street and try some horror with an Asian flavour.

Horror movies from East Asia have a lot going for them. Aside from offering a glimpse into unique cultural mythologies and traditions, you’ll find a greater emphasis on supernatural forc-es in the real world, compared to western horror, and more fatal-ism where individual agency is concerned.

Generally speaking, East Asian horror is also more likely to tackle difficult family and so-cietal dynamics, giving charac-ters greater psychological com-plexity and emotional depth.

You’ll get less gore, too, than in the average American horror flick — with a few notable excep-tions, such as Kinji Fukusaku’s Battle Royale and Park Chan-Wook’s ultraviolent Vengeance trilogy — and less sexploitation.

In fact, women in East Asian horror are often feisty, fully devel-oped characters who keep their clothes on and their dignity in-tact.

There’s a gold mine of titles to choose from, including modern Japanese classics, Ring and Ju-On: The Grudge, and quality Ko-rean fright fests, Oldboy and The Host. And while Hollywood has done its usual remakes, the origi-nals are far better and well worth watching.

To find the following titles, check: your local video store, Netflix.com, Zip.ca (your best bet) — or, if you want to own, Amazon.ca.

Japan

— The movie that kick-started the J-Horror boom has lost none of its impact, 13 years on. Combining a traditional Japanese ghost story with urban legend and technophobia, Ring centres on a journalist who inves-tigates a “video curse,” whereby

anyone who watches a mysteri-ous video gets a phone call, then dies one week later. The journal-ist and her ex-husband are them-selves exposed to the curse, and, in order to save themselves, must race against time to break it.

— While not a traditional horror film, this dystopian slasher movie is plenty suspenseful and surprisingly fun. To combat teen delinquency (in an admittedly twisted way), 40 middle-school students are se-lected by annual lottery. They’re then drugged and relocated to a deserted island where, fitted with electronic collars and given ran-dom weapons, they’re forced to participate in a three-day surviv-al game in which the last student to survive is the winner.

— Often cited as the most terrify-ing Japanese movie ever made, a “Ju-On” is defined as “a curse born of a grudge held by some-one who dies in the grip of anger. It gathers in the places frequent-ed by that person in life, working itself on those who come into contact with it, and thus creat-ing itself anew.” An ingeniously structured, six-part movie that focuses on the evil unleashed by a family’s murder in a house in suburban Tokyo, Ju-On is also full of fascinating social subtext. Essential viewing.

— A pol-ished and stylish effort that bears no resemblance to the truly awful Sandra Bullock remake, Premo-nition is as much about a couple struggling to heal after the sudden death of their child as it is about our power — or lack thereof — to change future events. The pace is slow, making the infrequent violence all the more shocking. Especially disturbing is the scene of a bloodied and straitjacketed figure slithering across the floor toward the haunted father.

— This claustrophobic nightmare takes place inside an understaffed, bad-ly lit hospital, where a deadly vi-rus has arrived via an ER patient. As patients and doctors alike are reduced to an icky, dark-green goo, fear and paranoia spread with the infection. The many

disturbing scenes (a nurse being forced to watch over a decompos-ing corpse in a dark room; anoth-er nurse practising injections on herself) are truly squirm-induc-ing, but the final message is that true horror is all in the mind.

South Korea

— Before kicking off four sequels, Whispering Corridors used fear and loathing inside a Korean girls’ high school to shine a light on the corporal punishment that characterizes the country’s school system.

In this instance, the ghost of a suicidal schoolgirl starts bump-ing off all the teachers and stu-dents who were mean to her in life. Without being preachy or contrived, director Park Ki-hyung creates an ominous atmosphere in the hornet’s nest that is any all-girls’ school.

— As in Ring, a reporter finds herself inves-tigating haunted technology — but this time, it’s the strange calls she’s getting on her new cellphone. After her best friend’s young daughter accidentally an-swers the phone and starts behav-ing demonically a la Linda Blair in The Exorcist, the reporter finds out all the previous own-ers of her cell number have died. Another spooky, stylish thriller about a ghost returning to wreak supernatural vengeance.

— Unlike other titles on this list, Acacia remains a complete mystery right up un-til its surprise ending. Six-year-old Jin-sung is an orphan whose strange artwork attracts the in-terest of an upper-class couple, who end up adopting him. Back at their suburban home, Jin-sung stares stonily at his new family and becomes obsessed with the acacia tree in the backyard. Mad-ness descends on the household, while the tree itself turns into a kind of monster. A very unusual movie by Whispering Corridors’ Park Ki-hyung that reveals Kore-ans’ discomfort with adoption.

— The second instalment in Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy, Oldboy is

the story of Oh Dae-su, who’s abducted and imprisoned in a room with a TV, from which he learns he’s been framed for his wife’s murder. Fifteen years later, Oh (Korean superstar Choi Min-sik) is abruptly released, leaving him free to exact retribution on his captors. Not for the faint of heart due to its graphic violence, Oldboy (which can be viewed in-dependently of its particularly nasty predecessor, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Fes-tival.

— A wronged woman is the star of the final instalment of Park’s Vengeance trilogy: After serving a prison sentence for a murder she didn’t commit, Lee Geum-ja wreaks elaborate revenge against the real killer. Because of some very dark scenes, includ-ing the organized torture of the perpetrator by the parents of his young victims, viewer discretion is also strongly advised.

Hong Kong

Also excellent are a couple of shorts from Hong Kong included in the “3 Extremes” pan-Asian horror anthologies:

- — While bear-

ing the hallmarks of much Asian horror (a creepy apartment building, the ghost of a child, a corpse — or what looks like one), Peter Chan’s Going Home is a masterwork of suspense. What promises to be a horrific tragedy turns into a surprising love story that redeems even the story’s ap-parent villain.

- — Fruit Chan’s

Dumplings was eventually made into a full-length feature, but the short version is still effective, in equal measures disturbing and excoriating of society’s obses-sion with youth and beauty. The scenes of Aunt Mei cooking “spe-cial” dumplings for a middle-aged customer who wants to stay young for her adulterous hus-band are beautifully shot — in a revolting kind of way. Also essen-tial viewing.

Handout

Yeong-ae Lee stars in the 2005 East Asian horror movie Lady Vengeance.

Oldboy won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Ju-On: The Grudge is often cited as the most frightening Japanese horror !lm.

Handout photos

Whispering Corridors is a fright-fest set in a Korean girls’ high school.

Premonition is a Japanese thriller based on the 1973 manga, Newspaper of Terror.

Classics of modern Asian horror worth watching this Halloween

Who’s afraid of LADY VENGEANCE?