Asian Horror, what's it all about and why is it so important that it deserves its own spot?

Well for one, I don't run with the nay-sayers that only see these films as white-faced asian girls and one too many ghosts. If you've really spent some time with these films you know that they contain some of the richest and scariest content around. Not that there isn't alot of repetition in the genre and the repertoire of the filmmakers, but .....from what I can tell there's just as much magic as there is redundancy in the collection. This columns was started to separate the men from the boys, so to speak by helping the viewers out with some intelligent reports on the scene, the films and whatever goods we can find to add to this little section.

I still get excited when I plop in one of these films knowing that I'm going to be amazed or put to sleep. It really is "that" black and white at times. And I'll admit that some of these totally lose me in odd presentations of ideas I just don't understand..

the migration:
There is no arguing that many successful films have borrowed ideas and techniques from these gems. I believe at some point it became oversaturated and alot of bad eggs got promoted to front-line. Isn't it apparent from the US remakes that with the exception of "The Ring" and some of Grudge that they lacked the haunting vocabulary that made the originals so appealing? I don't hate the "Grudge" films, though they did miss the mark in some translations. "Grudge 1 was fun, Grudge 2 maybe not so much.... But lets say that one of the reasons re-makes got a bad rap was due to the bad remaking of great Asian horror. There's no comparison between Asian "Shutter" and US Shutter....US sucked, and Asian rocked.

Dark moments:
Now along with the entertaining comes some really dark moments in filmmaking. Yes, those Asian unmentionables that cross the boundaries of human cinematic experiences and just being plain wrong. We'll be covering some of those as well. They may be unsettling, though they do contribute to the well of Asian horror culture that got it to where it is today.

Anyways the purpose of this column is to bring in some additional talent and writers on the team to contribute to its growth. We'll be posting reviews, and all kinds of fun stuff to give this section its own flair.... for those who already know what I'm talking about, I'm sure you'll appreciate the focus on this unique style of filmmaking and storytelling.....For those who don't, don't give up so easily ......there is quite a bit of originality yet to witness in these special horror experiences..

J-Horror (from wikipedia)
J-Horror is a term used to refer to Japanese contributions to horror fiction in popular culture. J-Horror is noted for its unique thematic and conventional treatment of the horror genre in light of western treatments. J-horror tends to focus on psychological horror and tension building (anticipation), particularly involving ghosts and poltergeists, while many contain themes of folk religion such as: possession, exorcism, shamanism, precognition, and yokai.

cat iii
CAT III is a classification given to really extreme Asian movies. Since this site is a horror site, We will only review ones that fall into the "horror" category of the CAT III films. Though you can use it as a pre-warning to films that might be too unsetlling to watch. We copied the info below from Wikipedia for a summary of CAT III.

The government's introduction of a film ratings system in 1988 had a certainly unintended effect on subsequent trends. The "Category III" (adults only) rating became an umbrella for the rapid growth of pornoraphic and generally outré films; however, while considered graphic by Chinese standards, these films would be more on par with movies rated "R" or "NC-17" in the United States, and not "XXX". By the height of the boom in the early '90s, roughly half of the theatrical features produced were Category III-rated softcore erotica descended from the fengyue movies of the '70s. (Yang, 2003) A definitive example of a mainstream Category III hit was Michael Mak's Sex and Zen (1991), a period comedy inspired by The Carnal Prayer Mat, the seventeenth century classic of comic-erotic literature by Li Yu (Dannen and Long, 1997).

The rating also covered a fad for grisly, taboo-tweaking exploitation and horror films, often supposedly based on true crime stories, such as Men Behind the Sun (1988), Dr. Lamb (1992), The Untold Story (1993) and Ebola Syndrome (1996).

Since the mid-'90s, the trend has withered with the shrinking of the general Hong Kong film market and the wider availability of pornography in home video formats (Bordwell, 2000). But in 2000's, three Category III movies: Election its sequel, Election 2 (aka Triad Election), and Mad Detective still enjoyed surprising box office successes in Hong Kong.

- BoneDigger

ASIAN HORROR MOVIE POSTERS:
For your viewing pleasure, we have added A selection of Asian Horror movie posters. These images offer certain beauty in their own right that translates much different than the US brand of marketing posters. Whether the film itself is a keeper or not there is no denying the artistic quality of these images.