When people think of horror, it usually drums up the same images: a mindless monster, a woman screaming, jumpscares, blood and gore, terror- you know the clichés. It makes sense that these ideas are constantly correlated with horror, seeing as how they can be found in every horror movie these days. Correction: every American horror movie these days. Japanese Horror, Jhorror for short, relies on different tactics when attempting to instill fear in the hearts of the audience. Urban settings, suspense, dread, and sympathetic villains usually set the mood for the story.
This past week, I read Haruki Murakami’s novel A Wild Sheep Chase and watched Dark Water (dir. by Hideo Nakata) as well as parts of Kwaidan (dir. by Masaki Kobayashi) and Pulse (dir. by Kioshi Kurosawa). While all of these stories vary widely in content, they all share a few key characteristics that I’ve come to associate with the Jhorror genre.
The first thing that immediately stood out to me was how much effort was put into developing the urban life of the main characters. In Dark Water, a good portion of the film is dedicated to elaborating on the relationship between the mother and her daughter, the struggles of custody and divorce, and the obstacles with being a working single mother. I found myself questioning if the movie was even about horror (of course, about two thirds of the way in the horror aspect became blatantly clear). Similarly, A Wild Sheep Chase spends chapters and chapters setting up character relationships and painting the world that the main character lives in. Thinking back, the high levels of exposition are what help the scary aspects shine even brighter. Once we get a taste of what regular life is like for the protagonist, seeing the extreme disruption feels like a bigger impact on them than, say, throwing jumpscares and monsters in full throttle after only ten minutes of set-up.
Speaking of jumpscares, their complete absence in Jhorror was also a noticeable change from American horror movies. Instead, these films focus on dread and suspense, having the monster slowly creep towards the protagonist- never speeding up, never jumping forward. In fact, sometimes the heavy anticipation is worse. The increasing dread of danger, ceaseless, unrelenting- it’s the same build-up of fear but with no release. While watching Pulse, I found myself turning away during these moments in fear of a jumpscare that would never come. It's quite an effective technique, one I never would have thought of as being successfully terrifying.
The villains in Jhorror films are unique as well, belonging to a distinct brand of antagonist: they have redeemable qualities and understandable motives. In Kwaidan, the winter spirit was presented with the perfect opportunity to kill the main character, but her pity and love for him led her to spare him. Then, after disguising herself to live with that man for years and eventually hearing her husband break his promise of silence, she spared him yet again to save their children. In most horror films, her character would’ve killed, or at least threatened, both him and the children. She wouldn’t have cared, wouldn’t have felt sympathy. Instead, her motherly instincts dominated her actions. In Dark Water, the main “monster” is a little girl who drowned in a water tank. She stalks the main mother and child for the duration of the film, using water to attack. At the end, however, we learn that all along the girl was just looking for a mother to stay with her. The faceless little girl is painted as less terrifying and more pitiful.
These differences really stood out to me while reading and watching A Wild Sheep Chase, Dark Water, Kwaidan, and Pulse, and I plan to look more into the genre to find out if these unique characteristics I've discovered hold true for most of the other JHorror films and novels.
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