15 Japanese Horror Movies That'll Haunt Your Nightmares
IDK if I'm going to be able to sleep tonight...
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Hollywood isn't the only place where great horror movies are made. Studios from all over the world have produced, and continue to produce, great films that belong to the genre. And IDK if you've heard, but one country beats out the rest when it comes to finding new and creative ways to frighten viewers: Japan. The country is basically the unofficial capital of horror, being the breeding ground of iconic films such as Ring and The Grudge.
Filmmakers from all over the world draw inspiration from and have even recreated Japanese horror movies. But somehow there's just a unique quality that makes Japanese horror inimitable and especially scary. With that said, here are some of the best and scariest horror films from the Land of the Rising Sun.
Ju-On: The Grudge
Rika Nishina (Megumi Okina) is a volunteer social assistant assigned to care for an old woman named Sachie (Chikako Isomura). So she goes to Sachie's family home, and while it looks totally normal, she finds that there's an eerie presence in the house. She then finds out about a relentless curse that befalls any outsider who steps foot in the place, and ultimately ends with their death.
Ring also known as Ringu
A group of teens is found dead with their faces frozen in horror. Among them is the niece of reporter Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima). They say that the unfortunate incident happened because of a supposedly cursed videotape. Reiko decides to investigate. And with the help of her ex-husband Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada), she gets the tape. As soon as she watches it, she gets a call saying she only has a week to live. She and Ryuji then set out on a mission to try and break the curse.
Kwaidan
"Kwaidan" is an old Japanese word that translates to "ghost story." And that pretty much sums up what this cinematic anthology is about. This film adapts four different folk tales: a poor samurai who marries for money but whose plan ends in tragedy, a man who gets caught in a blizzard whose second chance at life comes at a cost, a blind musician forced to perform for ghosts, and an author who relates to the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.
Pulse
After a college student named Taguchi (Kenji Mizuhashi) commits suicide, young people in Tokyo have been seeing some disturbing things all over the Internet. And some of them have even begun to disappear. Michi (Kumiko Aso), Ryosuke (Haruhiko Katô) and Harue (Koyuki)—all in their own parallel timelines—then try to solve the mystery of how spirits are making their way out into the real world from computer screens.
Dark Water
Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) is going through a rough divorce and is fighting in order to keep custody of her daughter Ikuko (Rio Kanno). She tries to make a fresh start for herself and for her child by moving into a new apartment. But strange things are happening in the building, including a mysterious water problem. She and her daughter then begin seeing visions of a little girl, and it becomes clear that there's something supernatural going on.
Exte: Hair Extensions
Customs agents discover the body of a dead girl, and when she's brought to the morgue, night watchman Yamazaki (Ren Osugi) becomes infatuated with her hair and brings her body home. It begins to grow hair everywhere: eye sockets, open wounds, mouth—and Yamazaki takes this as an opportunity to harvest the hair and sell it as hair extensions. But as it turns out, the hair kills anyone who wears it.
Tag
High school student Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) survived a tragically random event when a gust of wind cut through her school bus, killing everyone else on board. She then finds herself in even more bizarre situations, and everything descends into chaos as she begins to question who she is and what is "normal" anymore.
Audition
Widower Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) decides to get back into dating, though he decides to go about it in a very unconventional way. With the help of a film producer friend, he sets up auditions for a fake production and uses it as a dating service. He meets and becomes enamored by Asami (Eihi Shiina), and they begin a relationship. But he soon realizes that this wasn't what he signed up for and that Asami isn't who she says she is.
Uzumaki
Young schoolgirl Kirie (Eriko Hatsune) notices that something very strange is going on in her town, and it all has to do with spirals. Her boyfriend's dad becomes obsessed with the shape, and kills himself by crawling into a washing machine. Some people are turning into snails. And some girls have their hair floating in the air in swirls. She and her boyfriend decide to get to the bottom of the curse to try and save their friends and family.
Noroi: The Curse
Paranormal researcher Masafumi Kobayashi (Jin Muraki) mysteriously disappears after filming a documentary entitled The Curse. While he was making the film, he got in too deep and this unleashed an unknown force that caused his home to burn down, his wife to lose her life, and him to go missing. All that's left is the footage his cameraman took. This movie is a mock documentary-style film revealing what truly happened to Masafumi.
One Missed Call
Yumi's (Kou Shibasaki) friend Yoko (Anna Nagata) is shaken after receiving a terrifying message left on her voicemail from her future self. The sound was Yoko's own screaming. Three days later, Yoko dies screaming as she did in the voicemail. That's when Yumi discovers that this has been happening all over Japan, with people receiving voice messages from their future selves telling them when and how they die. Yumi gets one, too, and decides that she wants to learn the truth behind these cursed missed calls.
One Cut of the Dead
A director and his film crew are working on a low-budget zombie film. They decide that the best place to film their scenes is in an abandoned warehouse that's been around since World War II. It's said that the facility was used for human experimentation. As they go about making their movie, things become too real when real zombies attack and take over the set. Still, the camera keeps rolling as events unfold in this horror-comedy film.
Howling Village
Yuma (Ryota Bando) has suddenly disappeared after going on a trip outside of the city with his girlfriend. His sister, young psychologist Kanade (Ayaka Miyoshi), is then determined to look for her teen brother. And so she travels to his last known location: a haunted place known as the "Howling Village." As she falls further down the rabbit hole during her search, she finds out that the village's mysteries are somehow linked to her family.
Noriko's Dinner Table
Noriko (Kazue Fukiishi) runs away from her home in a provincial town, leaving her family and old life behind forever. She moves to the big city, Tokyo, to find an Internet cult group called Haikyo.com. The strange cult hires out its members to clients who want to pretend they have a family. Noriko gets in too deep and loses herself in the cult's practices.
The Happiness of the Katakuris
This eerie and strange musical horror-comedy centers around the Katakuri family. They open an inn up in the mountains. But as the guests come in, they meet their sudden and untimely demise. Fearing bad publicity, the family decides to bury the bodies of their deceased guests themselves. But, of course, this comes back to bite them.
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