Nightmare Detective / Akumu tantei (2006)

We first meet Kagenuma, the Nightmare Detective (Ryuhei Matsuda), with an in joke about J-Horror itself. He has entered the nightmares of Oishi, an old man who keeps a long black wig on the wall and seems to be haunted by it. Kagenuma explains the nightmares, but Oishi prefers to stay in the dream world …

Mohohan / Copycat / Copycat Killers (2002)

Copycat is the story of a serial killer who wants to be absolutely original, using Japan's intense media environment to make him a star first as a killer who is never caught and then as a spokesman for the victims. As is so often the case in Japanese story-telling, we do not even meet our …

Pulse* / Kairo (2001)

There doesn't seem any easier way to begin than to say that Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse is quite possibly the greatest horror film ever made. In it, he has combined many of the themes of his earlier movies into an engrossing and terribly disturbing horror movie, while doing so without a drop of blood, a creaking …

Ringu (1998)

Over the course of the years I had not been particularly interested in the standard modern horror film, from Japan or elsewhere. Though I had happened upon numerous imitations, sequels, remakes, and off-shoots of Ringu, I had never seen the original version, so it was something of a surprise to discover that it was actually …

Haru (1996)

If any of my readers are too young to remember a time before the internet, Yoshimitsu Morita's Haru is an excellent introduction to the tentative and confusing world that accompanied its first steps into the general culture. Coming two years before You've Got Mail, it is one of the earliest movies I have found that …