Gozu is a 2003 cult movie directed by Takashi Miike. Shot on a low budget, Gozu was originally planned for release on DVD but a positive reception at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2003 secured its theatrical release overseas.
Gozu has a reputation for being one of the strangest films ever made, with its ensemble of weird characters and dreamlike storyline. Read more…
Cure is a 1997 psychological thriller/horror directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and starring Koji Yakusho and Masato Hagiwara. Police detective Kenichi Takabe is investigating a series of bizarre murders. Though each victim is killed the same way, with an X mark carved into their chests, the perpetrator seems to be different every time. In every case the murderer is caught close to the scene of the crime, and though they readily confess to committing the murder, they often have no motive and cannot adequately explain what drove them to kill. Read more…
Dark Water is a 2002 J-horror directed by Hideo Nakata and starring Hitomi Kuroki, Rio Kanno. It involves a woman, Yoshimi Matsubara, who, in the midst of an unpleasant divorce, moves to an eerie, run-down apartment building with her young daughter, Ikuko. The ceiling of their apartment has a dark and active leak. Yoshimi discovers that the upstairs apartment, which appears to be the source of the leak, was formerly the home of a young girl named Mitsuko Kawai, who was of similar age to her daughter. The child had attended the same kindergarten Ikuko now attends. Mitsuko was abandoned by her mother and vanished more than a year ago. She also had owned a red bag which was the same bag that Ikuko found on the apartment roof when first viewing the apartment. Read more…
Tomie will Not die: While investigating a murder of a high school student named Tomie the lead detective tracks down a schoolmate suffering from amnesia who can’t remember anything that happened 3 months prior to Tomie’s death and she starts to suspect the cause of her amnesia is supernatural. She also suspects there is something odd going on next door with her new neighbor who is rearing a peculiar creature. Over the span of a week the creature grows into a beautiful teenage girl who responds to the name Tomie can’t die. Read more…
Dark Tales of Japan is a collection of short horror movies by Japan’s best horror directors (Yoshihiro Nakamura, Norio Tsuruta, Kôji Shiraishi, Takashi Shimizu, Masayuki Ochiai) each racing to reach the outer limits of fear! The horrifying episodes are The Spiderwoman, Crevices, The Sacrifice, Blond Kwaldan and Presentiment.
Get Dark Tales of Japan on DVD
If you like J-Horror you’ll love Underworld, an anthology of six spooky stories.
Chain Mail: Friends of Sayaka get their kicks sending out hoax e-mails with the name of one of their classmates who killed herself due to bullying. Sayaka feels guilt for her failure to stop the hoax. But her friends die one after the another under mysterious circumstances. That is when Sayaka receives an e-mail with a picture of herself killed. Read more…
Apartment 1303 is a 2007 J-horror movie directed by Ataru Oikawa and starring Naoko Otani and Eriko Hatsune. When happy-go-lucky Sayaka jumps from the thirteenth floor balcony of her new apartment after only one day , her elder sister Mariko refuses to believe it was suicide despite the conclusions of the police report. Read more…
Retribution is a 2006 J-horror movie directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and starring Kôji Yakusho and Manami Konishi. Yoshioka, an experienced police detective, investigates the murder of an unknown woman in a red dress. She was drowned on the Tokyo waterfront, in a pool of muddy water, but an autopsy reveals that her belly is full of seawater. Read more…
Cursed is a 2004 J-horror movie directed by Yoshihiro Hoshino. Cursed is about a spooky mini-mart that claims the souls of its unfortunate victims. Two students, Yuko and her friend, arrive at Mitsuya where Yuko proclaims she can’t enter the shop. She backs away too far and gets hit by a truck… Read more…
Tales of Terror From Tokyo and All Over Japan features stories collected by writers Hirokatsu Kihara and Ichiro Nakayama from accounts told to them as true from all over Japan. This full length feature draws 8 of the creepiest tales together, featuring The Night Watchmen, Wisps of Smoke, Gloves, Full-Length Mirror and more…