31 Days of Night: The Weekend.

Just a quick heads up to let you know this project isn't forgotten. I've got three movies lined up to review: The Black House, Korea's The Office and tonight's film D-Day. I'll be doing the reviews alongside normal reviews over the coming week but due to various health and safety issues this weekend, I wasn't able to.

31 Days of Night, Day 6: The Bride

Staying in Taiwan for this next film, a recent addition called The Bride. Before we get into the movie, I'd like to make a small announcement - since we're clocking in at 30 reviews rather than 31, I will be doing a special bonus video. Please feel free to comment below with your suggestions. Also, sorry for this late review. Real life issues kind of kept me from getting to this until fairly late today.

Guest Reviewers: +Frank Fernandez and the Masked Wrestler Los Cien Ranas

So tonight's film is, like the previous two, a product of the upswing in horror films coming from Taiwan and China. Like our previous film, The Tag Along, it takes its inspiration from a modern resurgence of urban legend and folklore in Taiwan, specifically the practice of "Ghost Weddings", where an unsuspecting man is tricked into marrying a girl who died unwed in order to make sure that her soul could successfully enter the afterlife.

Our guest reviewer was specifically interested in a couple of points in this film - the depiction of non-Christian clergy dealing with the supernatural in the form of a Daoist master who assists the presumptive protagonist, and the use of a Chinese spirit board, which is similar in principle to a ouija board but produces quite a lot more information. I found these elements specifically interesting because they address the idea of giving the protagonists of a horror or mystery story their own supernatural abilities, without using them as a short circuit in the story. This actually comes into play with the actual protagonist as well, as this movie does an interesting twist in revealing to us that the person we thought was our hero actually was not.

On that note, this movie was also quite interesting in that almost the entire cast was female and the dialogue actively comments on the fact that Ghost Weddings are tied to paternalistic and patriarchical ideas regarding the afterlife in China's history. Setting those two points of interest aside, though, I think the most interesting thing about the movie is what it says in context with the other two Taiwanese horror films we've watched so far.

There is a tendency when reviewing horror (or, indeed, any fiction) created within and for another culture to assume that that fiction purely expresses the ideals of that culture. If one were to watch Silk, one might walk away with an idea that Taiwan is a very secular culture, while The Tag Along and The Bride both present very different views on traditional culture, folklore and urban legend from their native culture.

The same applies going further back to Cursed, Dead Waves and Four Roads to Hell, each of which often present the supernatural in interlinked by subtly different ways. Our reaction to these films is itself, I feel, an important element to consider when reviewing and discussing them as outsiders. We are seeing how one person, or one group of people working together, was influenced by the elements of their culture, and in doing so we sometimes neglect to consider that - just as with a work of fiction created in our own culture, the person creating it is an individual who is influenced by specific memes and ideas rather than a perfect, objective expression of those ideals.

As we explore the genre of horror in Asian film over the course of this month, and as we go into action and martial arts films in general, it's important to remember that even though films like The Bride and Silk draw from the same stock of visual and cultural elements, we can only really discuss the films in the context of how those influences touched the individual writer's filter, which may seem obvious but - I feel - is an important lesson to be mindful of when you approach another culture's fiction and stories.

Back to the movie at hand, although I've mentioned before that I tend to shy away from value judgments, I want to say that The Bride was probably the best of the films we've reviewed so far. There's very little in either technique or presentation that can be criticized, and I honestly feel that it's one film that will go down as a hallmark of Taiwanese horror. We see a unique vision of ghosts, the supernatural, femininity and traditional culture embedded in the film, and I feel like it's one I can recommend to anyone who might be interested in the genre of horror from China as a good point of entry.

31 Days of Night, Day 4: Silk and Day 5: The Tag-Along

For our first three days, we covered some basics of Japanese horror (not classics, though we'll be getting to those shortly). Yesterday and today, though, we've moved to Taiwan for two films - 2006's Silk and the more recent urban legend inspired film The Tag Along. Now, going into these films it should be noted that Taiwanese (and Chinese) horror is not as strongly my forte as Japanese films, for one specific reason - for a long time, China had very little traditional horror film industry. Most of the films we'll be looking at this month will be products of the 21st century (next month, when I join +Frank Fernandez in reviewing action and martial arts films for When Fist Meets Vest, we'll get around to Chinese horror-comedy-martial arts fantasy films, which are really a genre of their own), and I recommend that you look into the genre yourself as it's currently a growing and really unique venue for horror films.

Silk Guest Reviewers: +Frank Fernandez +Mark Parker +Michael Watkins and the Masked Wrestler El Periquito

The Tag Along Guest Reviewers: +Frank Fernandez ; +Mark Parker ; +A. Middleton; +Jesse Anderson  and the Masked Wrestler El Periquito

So I was going to write about the influence of modernity and science on Asian horror with these two films, and both are pretty ripe for it - Silk details a world in which the primary research into ghosts and what happens to "human energy" after humans pass on is conducted by scientists looking to exploit a new technology that, among other things, produces reliable anti-gravity, and The Tag Along is linked to a viral internet video as well as, itself, touching briefly on themes of environmentalism and urbanization through its use of Chinese mountain spirits.

That being said, I think both of these movies have a stronger thematic link through the power of love. Love is a powerful force in horror movies - Mrs. Voorhees loved Jason and it drove her to murder and dark magic in Friday the Thirteenth, and the protagonist's mother in Hellraiser assists her wicked uncle in escaping the Cenobites because she believes herself in love with him. Rarely is any emotion presented positively in horror, though, and in exploring Japanese horror in Dead Waves, we saw how love (without empathy, perhaps, but love nonetheless) could twist someone up inside - often the supernatural horrors of those films, or the simply human horrors, turn love into something dark and dangerous.

Not so with these films, which show a stark break away from the often-bleak, sometimes nihilistic views of J-Horror. Though it's hard to say what a common cultural theme for horror might be with such a small sample size, I'd say it's fair to say that both films take a more humanistic view of horror than you would find in other examples we'll be looking at this month (and which we have already looked at). In Silk, we find that the love between mother and son is a powerful bond even after death, and can overcome both hate and fear in addition to separation. In The Tag Along, it's the protagonist's love for her fiance, and his love for his grandmother, that both lures them into the spirit's trap and gives them the chance at freedom.

I don't want to say too much on the specific topics raised because I feel that some parts of the plot are best left unspoiled, but I feel it's worth noting here that these films show one marked difference from the previous entries into this month's reviews - Cursed and Dead Waves both used the concept of infection by the supernatural to ask us questions about culpability, responsibility and empathy. The Tag Along and Silk both strive to answer those questions by telling us that love can overcome guilt and hate and pain, the very things that fuel the darkness that plagues the protagonists of the previous films.

31 Days of Night, Day 3: Dead Waves

Tonight's film, Dead Waves, has a somewhat darker tone than the previous films that we've talked about in this year's series. It eschews the anthology format for what we would consider a more traditional sort of horror story - a television director, desperate for ratings, makes a series of decisions that draw him deeper into evils both supernatural and mundane.

Guest Reviewers: +Mark Parker , +Frank Fernandez , +Jesse Anderson , +Michael Watkins and the Masked Wrestler El Periquito

Like our last film, Cursed, this film touches on themes of infection - the idea of a curse that spreads like a disease is pervasive in Japanese horror. Here, we even have an incidental moment where - on an internet message board - someone asks "Can I be cursed if I see images of the paranormal on television?", touching on a number of superstitions common in Japan involving cursed images and ghost pictures.

Unlike the other film, though, Dead Waves' curse doesn't seem to simply spread by random chance. Those infected create a vector for it through their own guilt - either the very real guilt suffered by the main protagonist and his antithesis, or the feelings of guilt and self-loathing associated with depression. Depression is, itself, a major theme in the film, as is mental illness as a general topic. While I hesitate to say whether it addressed it well or poorly, as I'm not a native of the culture for whom the movie was made, I will say that some of the images and themes in the film may be problematic or upsetting for those who deal with depression and suicidal ideation, as a warning.

Although the curse in Dead Waves infects us through our guilt, the vector by which it is transmitted is much more mundane - radio waves, specifically those used in television, transmit the titular "dead waves", creating the conditions by which the curse spreads. As in Ringu and Kairo (and other films such as Speak to the Dead in Japan or Are you there? in China), the symbolic link between the ephemeral nature of the way in which modern society communicates and the supernatural is a strong thematic element.

What I realized as I was watching this film, though, has less to do with the specifics of the supernatural disease and more to do with one of the cornerstones of "why am I doing these reviews?", and that's because of my firm belief in the universal nature of horror. Both in talking about Dead Waves and the previous film, Cursed, I discussed the idea of a supernatural curse that attacks indiscriminately, infecting those around it like a disease, in the specific context of Japanese culture, and it's certainly valid to consider that the specific expression found in those and other films wouldn't exist outside that culture's specific mix of germaphobia, social constructs and concepts of religious or spiritual purity.

That being said, however, the idea of an indiscriminate curse or evil that attacks based not on who you are or what you've done, but simply because you filled certain conditions, is not unique to Japan, or even to other cultures in east Asia. Jason doesn't care that the counselors he kills aren't the ones that allowed him to die all those years ago, and Michael Meyers doesn't stop killing once his family members are dead - he targets anyone who sets foot in his family home. Going back even further, fairy tales about people who encounter terrible curses for breaking obscure laws or crossing hidden boundaries are universal throughout European culture, and the idea of spiritual pollution isn't that far behind it.

When addressing horror as a genre of film or literature, I feel it's important to keep in mind that while culture is a part of what informs the writer's mind (the filter as Stephen King put it in his wonderful essays on writing), the tools of horror - or, rather, its roots - are universal. It can be strange, perhaps, to say that horror can bring people together, but fear and the need to confront and understand it are concepts that are universal to the human condition as we understand it.

As we go forward and explore more of the excellent films (and some that are simply so bad they're good), I'll continue to talk about how they relate to the cultures that produce them, but for this film, I think the important takeaway - for myself at least - was that the things we fear are universal. The protagonist of Dead Waves forgot this - he allowed his own concerns to cloud his empathy for those around him, and in the end suffered for it even though he tried to make amends, and the startling lack of empathy he showed right until the very end was perhaps the scariest part of the entire experience.

31 Days of Night, Day 2: Cursed

Tonight's film, Cursed, shares its name with an American horror movie starring Christina Ricci that came out around the same time. Although the Christina Ricci film was a pretty decent werewolf film and this one is a film about the Devil's own convenience store, there is a broad thematic connection between the two films: the idea of contagion.

As we progress through the month, we'll see this theme come up quite a lot in horror films from across Asia, but particularly in Japan, the idea that the supernatural is a contagion that infects who come in contact with it, spreading like an infection. The most iconic examples of this, of course, are Ringu and Ju-on, which we will be watching later this month, but it's a common thread through a great deal of Japanese horror that once you come into contact with the supernatural, the rest of your (usually short) life will be tainted by it.

Guest Reviewers: +A. Middleton , +Mark Parker , +Frank Fernandez and the Masked Wrestler El Periquito

Okay this film was actually quite good - I know I said I don't like to speak in terms of good and bad, but this one was pretty good. The soundtrack was..not so good. That pretty much covers the general review part of the film so for the rest of this post I'm going to talk about how this film combines the concept of infection I mentioned above with a story about that important cornerstone of Japanese culture - the convenience store.

In Japan, you can go to a convenience store to pay your bills, buy pretty much any product you need (including popular video games and action figures), avail yourself of office supplies and buy 100 yen pork buns. For young people (and busy people and, well, lots of people) convenience stores are an important part of the community and, like any pillar of society, become great fodder for horror when what first seemed like a bastion of normalcy, even banality, becomes sinister. 

One of the reviewers commented on how unique the concept of a haunted convenience store is, and I really feel like this movie ran with that concept to its fullest - it wasn't just a haunted convenience store, it was the evilest convenience store imaginable, and those it didn't kill eventually became a part of its great and terrible design.

I don't want to give away many of the plot points, but this film is also an anthology of sorts - albeit one with an overarching frame story surrounding the lives of the store's part-time workers (Samson and Nori) and Nao, a young woman from a corporate firm looking to buy the convenience store from its current owners. As the movie progresses, we are - briefly - introduced to characters who are essentially infected by the supernatural power of the convenience store and haunted by the spirits present within. Those that don't die, eventually, become like the store's owners - twisted by the evil to which they are subjected.

There are a number of scenes involving symbolic impurity present in the film - the convenience store's origins touch on this, and there's a lengthy discussion between two characters on whether a supernatural impurity might be punishment or simply a natural force beyond human control. The movie doesn't have any particularly easy answers to offer there, but it does touch on some themes that we will see more and more in-depth as we explore this sub-genre of horror, making it an excellent primer on the topic.

All in all, I recommend this film to anyone who's interested in Japanese horror films but wants to stretch beyond the "standards" set by films like The Ring and The Grudge. Its unique premise and use of frame story makes it an interesting experience in its own right, while simultaneously grounding it in themes that recur throughout the entire genre.

31 Days of Night, Day 1: Four Roads to Hell

For this year's 31 Days of Night, I intend to focus primarily on horror films originating in Japan, Korea and China (J-Horror, K-Horror, and C-Horror, sometimes collectively called A-Horror).

In Japanese horror, the anthology film is a staple of the genre. American horror anthologies have become popular over the years thanks to the V/H/S series, but occupy a much smaller part of the horror genre than they do elsewhere, so we'll probably see quite a few films like tonight's in the coming month.

Tonight's film is titled Four Roads to Hell, or Tales of Terror from Japan. Last year, on Day 6 of this project, I reviewed some similar films and my assessment of the style's place in the genre remains pretty much the same: the anthology genre, such as the film we're watching, has its roots all the way back to the Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, and is probably one of the oldest parts of Japanese horror culture still in practice today.

Without further ado, however, tonight's film:

Guest Reviewers: +Frank Fernandez ; +Mark Parker  ; +A. Middleton 

Four Roads, from a purely technical standpoint, is reminiscent in quality to an American made for TV film. This isn't entirely unusual, though, as Japanese film budgets tend to be more comparable to television budgets than you'd find in America. The shorts themselves are arranged by different directors, and range from horror-comedy (such as Another One, where the narrator is troubled by an oddly polite, track-suit wearing ghost and The Promise, about a young man's relationship with his grandmother following her death), to more standard horror premises (Overtime, about an office building where young men who work overtime find their lives endangered by the ghost of an office lady or Breath of Mononoke, which bookends the series with the story of a young woman being chased through a car park by a creature which at least one of the reviewers insists is a bear) to the outright surreal (Second Round, the story of a late night cab driver, or Men in Black, which touches on the Japanese fascination with alien mythology, or UMAs).

As might be evinced by the range of styles and stories, there's not a lot of coherence in the arrangement of shorts. At first, I considered the possibility that they might be arranged in such a way as to become progressively scarier over time, but the placement of The Promise upsets that theory. It occurred to me only after the film was over (our first foray this month is less than an hour long, which lends to the TV length feel of the production values) that the placement and "scariness" of the individual shorts didn't particularly matter. What was intriguing about Four Roads to Hell was the way in which they encapsulated so many different styles of story and creature - there were aliens, several ghosts, a bear(?), strange curses, whimsical hauntings and mysteries that remained unexplained even after we'd already moved on to the next tale.

The thing that the stories in Four Roads did have in common, though, was their abrupt endings. All of the reviewers commented on them, and I think that the true horror effect comes from there - the movie is remarkably light on jump scares or body horror, but where it's openly scary (as in Breath of Mononoke or Overtime), it drives home the inevitability of its protagonists' demise, and where it's whimsical or surreal, it ends abruptly, offering little explanation and no closure. A story like The Promise might leave us laughing, but it also leaves us with a seed of unsettling implications to dwell on long after the movie's over.

As a rule, I try not to dwell too much on whether a movie is good or bad - I tend to focus on whether a film succeeded in the goals it set out to achieve. In that arena, I feel like Four Roads has managed it. Even the stories that dipped heavily into comedy (already, as I've said before, a close companion to horror anyway), did so in a way that could easily veer into the unsettling and surreal, and - perhaps aware of the limitations of the medium in which they were working - the writers and directors arranged the shorts in a way to let us lead ourselves into that landscape through implication and consideration. This is actually a relatively common technique in a lot of Japanese storytelling, which often relies on the audience to fill in the blanks from context and their own imaginations, rather than leading them to a single core conclusion.

As we go through the month, we will likely touch on at least one or two other anthology films, but I think this one has an important lesson to teach regarding the way in which Japanese horror differs from its American counterparts - while they often draw from the same well (many of the visual elements of the Koji Suzuki novel, The Ring, draw heavily on 80s American horror stories), Japanese culture has a very different idea of how a story can and should end, which can often seem to be somewhat unsatisfying to an American audience. 

The Dawning of the First Day or Nerd Mind, Beginner's Mind

For the last couple of years, I've tried to do a series of movie reviews - one a night - featuring my insights into the horror genre, starting on October 1st through the 31st. This year, to continue that tradition, I've decided to set up my own blog.

Now this isn't the only thing I'll be using this for - more features and columns will be added as I have time to learn the formatting and develop my ideas, but I wanted to start by setting out a basic guideline.

There are a lot of nerd blogs and nerd sites where the focus becomes largely on the things we perceive as negative in our hobbies. Here I'm writing from a place of love - love for my fellow nerds as people who, even if we disagree, love the things that they love passionately, and love for the culture that we are experiencing through the media and stories we write and discuss on this blog. Sometimes criticism is important when talking about the things you love, in order to help them grow and become better, but the important rule is that this blog is focused on the positive and the constructive.

As you comment here, please be mindful of that goal going forward.