If you like your cinema to be unnerving, there’s nothing quite like J-horror.
Here are our decades-spanning picks of Japan’s best.
Audition(1999)
Auditionis a tough sell, but not because it’s a bad movie.
Rie Inō in ‘Ringu’; Godzilla in ‘Godzilla’; Kimiko Ikegami in ‘House’.Credit:Toho Co., Ltd.; Jerry Tavin/Everett; Everett
Quite the opposite, actually.
First is its unique combination of period swordplay a genre known in Japanese aschanbara and folklore-inspired paranormal elements.
Second is its star, Lady Snowblood herself, ’70s Japanese action icon Meiko Kaji.
Eihi Shiina in ‘Audition’.Everett Collection
Take away your job and your family and your place in society will there be anything left?
What follows is one of the most unsettling psychological cat-and-mouse games in film history.K.R.
Where to watchGodzilla: Max
Hausu(House) (1977)
How to explainHausu?
Meiko Kaji in ‘Blind Woman’s Curse’.Nikkatsu
Oh, and then a fluffy white cat starts vomiting geysers of blood out of the wall.
But Shimizu’s original still feels genuinely taboo.K.R.
It’s clear that the makers ofOne Cut of the Deadreally love horror and movie-making.
Yoriko Dôguchi in ‘Cure’.Everett Collection
And their enthusiasm, much like the zombie virus in the film-within-a-film, is infectious.K.R.
Where to watchTetsuo: The Iron Man: Shudder
Hitomi Kuroki and Rio Kanno in ‘Dark Water’.Everett Collection
Godzilla in ‘Godzilla’.Everett Collection
Yoko Minamida in ‘Hausu’.Everett Collection
Yûko Daike in ‘Ju-on: The Curse’.Everett Collection
Katsuo Nakamura in ‘Kwaidan’.Everett Collection
Kichiemon Nakamura and Kiwako Taichi in ‘Kuroneko’.Everett Collection
Satoru Jitsunashi in ‘Noroi: The Curse’.Cathay-Keris Films
Harumi Shuhama in ‘One Cut of the Dead’.Everett Collection
Jitsuko Yoshimura and Nobuko Otowa in ‘Onibaba’.Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett
Yoshie Nakagawa in ‘A Page of Madness’.Everett Collection
Mima Kirigoe in ‘Perfect Blue’.Everett
Kumiko Aso and Haruhiko Kato in ‘Pulse’.Everett
‘Ringu’.Everett Collection
Shin’ya Tsukamoto in ‘Tetsuo: The Iron Man’.Image Entertainment
