- Onibaba
Yesterday, the University of Chicago’s Doc Films screened the Japanese cult item House, an “incredibly odd Japanese horror feature [that’s] like a Hello Kitty backpack stuffed with bloody human viscera,” writes J.R. Jones, quite accurately and, uh, poetically. (If you’ve never seen the film and missed Doc’s screening, the DVD is available via Criterion; you’ll understand pretty quickly what Jones is getting at there.) Japanese horror, often referred to simply as J-horror, has a long and rich history dating all the way back to the silent era. Films in the genre range from allegorical and contemplative to grotesque and ultraviolent, but common threads of social commentary, folkloric narrative, and dark humor bind even the most disparate works. You can see my five favorite below.
- Suicide Circle [aka Suicide Club] (dir. Sion Sono, 2001) Sono is just finally starting to catch on with American audiences (local distributors Olive Films released his movies Himizu and Guilty of Romance to wide acclaim), and this troubling yet compulsively watchable feature is the best place to start if you’re still unfamiliar. An unabashed stylist with a zest for human depravity, Sono’s surveys of contemporary Japanese society are fiercely satirical and altogether irreverent, marked by his disregard for proper taste and unique ability to illustrate harsh truths by way of exploitation sleaze.
