J-Horror

I wasn't able to read this week because I was down with the flu and a fever up until Monday night and had alot to catch up on in PrePro after that. I did however dive into the J horror a little by renting the movie Pulse, since that was on the movie list for this week, and didn't want to be completely out of the loop this week. It's interesting because I have seen and heard of so many horror movies but I didn't know about this one, and it seems fairly new and likeable. I definately caught the familiarities with other J horror movies, such as the classic "The Grudge," and ring and all of that. They all have this eerie bluish tint to it that makes you feel completely cold down to your soul. As any other horror movie it's a bunch of college kids being stupid. I wasn't entirely a fan of this. I mean yes it entertained, I mean I stayed awake, but I don't think I'd rent it again. It was very predictable, as most horror movies are these days, which I understand had become impossible to overcome. I liked the effects though, ( me being a CA major tends to notice those ). The way they all seemed to get this vainy, ashy black rash that ate at their body.

What I've noticed about most Japanese work, not just in their horror section but even in fantasy, when they make a good verse evil type of story the evil in it is always some sort of blackness. Some blackened blobish thing that isn't even like an evil kind of person, or an evil kind of animal, but is just plain the manifestation of evil made into a physical form . For example the director Hiya Miyazaki always has these evil black blobs in his film

file:///Users/jdelore1/Desktop/320px-Mononoke_hime_cgi.png

I posted the link above as an example. In that film the black blob is taking over the main characters body, like a virus, the same way it happens in Pulse. I know the Japanese culture has strong beliefs in balance and that no one is purely evil, so maybe that's why they need to make evil this black, infecting thing, that doesn't actually come from people but instead infects them and takes them over.

I also noticed another common familiarity with Japenese work is that there is never the feeling of hopelessness, and everything always has a chance. Towards the end there's always a suggestion that whatever was evil is still around, and it's never completely killed off. In American culture I feel like we have a distinct good and evil and in our stories we kill it and it's gone and the world is once again a happy place. But in the Japanese work the evil is manipulated or sent away or changed in someway but never completely destroyed. It follows more of this circle of life and doesn't cease to exist but merely changes.

These are just things I've noticed from the films I've seen, I'm not sure the books are the same, perhaps things have been altered for Hollywood? Either way there's still differences, and I feel for most people you either love the J horror type of story or you hate them. There's no real middle ground, it either leaves a taste in ur mouth to ponder over for a little or leaves you feeling unsatisifed. I personally am usually in the first category, just with this movie I leaned towards the second.