I have blogged from time to time on one of my interests: Asian Horror Movies. The main reason I do this is because, well, I can. Having no editor is the great strength and weakness of blogs. But I can claim a more honest reason. Human beings like to tell spooky stories. The horror genre caters to that nearly universal taste. Asian horror tells me a lot about the moral/religious culture of the far East, and conversely about the same elements of Western Christendom.
Tonight I watched The Grudge 2. Three recent Japanese horror films have had a large impact on Asian cinema and all three have produced versions made for American audiences. They are: Ringu (The Ring in the U.S.), Ju-on (The Grudge), and Kairo (Pulse). All of them are stories of vengeful ghosts. Ringu was by far the best, and here I think that the Western version was even better than the original. Ju-on was by far the scariest. I actually screeched a couple of times. Kairo was by far the most disturbing.
Here is what I have noticed in comparing Western spooky stories with those of Asia. We tend to see evil as a reflection of human temptation. The ghost get in because of some sin some person commits. They (Asian storytellers) see evil as a force of nature that leaks into our world through some more or less natural process. More importantly, we think that evil forces are balanced by forces of good. Vampires fear the cross. They have lost all confidence in priests and their rituals. In Asian horror, there are no White wizards, or if there are, they are nearly always ineffectual. I am not sure what that means. But I am sure it means something.
The Grudge 2 is not half-bad. It is a bit over-written. It is much more Asian in spirit than most made for American remakes. Most interesting was the choice of Amber Tamblyn for the lead. Tamblyn was the star of Joan of Arcadia, a tv series that I very much enjoyed. In that show, God appears to Joan in a variety of physical forms: a little girl, a Black janitor. Joan struggles with God in every episode, but of course God always wins. In the Grudge 2, God is noticeably absent.
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