J-Horror Rising
Carved: The Slit Mouthed Woman, St. John’s Wort, and Inugami
directed by Kōji Shiraishi, Ten Shimoyama, Masato Harada
Arrow Video
In 1998, the cursed visage of vengeful ghost girl Sadako, with her white dress and long, wet, black hair, appeared on movie screens and terrified the world in Hideo Nakata’s Ringu. The film would not only usher in a wave of low budget horror films that emphasized dread over gore, but would also start a global creative tsunami, the effects of which are still being felt over 25 years later. This cycle of films, made on the cheap for the indie theater circuit and home video in Japan would come to be known colloquially as J-Horror. The J-Horror Rising box set from Arrow Video has collected seven films, Shikoku, Isola: Multiple Personality Girl, Inugami, St. John’s Wort, Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman, Persona, and Noroi: The Curse, and paired them with a number of great extras including interviews, video essays, and audio commentaries to create J-Horror Rising.
A number of different themes run through the horror films of this period from the late ’90s into the aughts. One of the most pronounced is the concern over the failing family unit. The traditional family in Japan was transforming, with divorce rates soaring and single mothers becoming more commonplace. The horror films of the era reflected the unease of the change, with numerous films exploring the trauma inflicted on children by abuse and neglect of single mothers. These films also exploited the cultural divide between the ultra-modern world of the cities in the Japanese mainland and the rural villages and islands that are clinging to their pastoral lifestyle and beliefs. Characters going from the city to rural enclaves and getting caught up in arcane rituals and superstitions of the region were great fodder for uniquely Japanese styles of folk horror. Thirdly, technology was exploding worldwide, and many horror filmmakers seized on new technology not only as a source of horror, but also as a creative method for disguising their low budgets. Carved: The Slit Mouthed Woman, St. John’s Wort, and Inugami are three standouts from the set that not only bring the spooky, but also explore the themes that made this cycle of Japanese horror so memorable.
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Carved: The Slit Mouthed Woman (2007, Kōji Shiraishi) is a curse movie that follows the same basic structure as Ringu, where an urban legend spreads amongst the kids — a legend that happens to be real, with deadly consequences — and it is up to damaged adults to put an end to the curse and save the children. In Ringu, it is a cursed video, where in Carved: The Slit Mouthed Woman it is the titular being who walks the streets and approaches children asking them “Am I Pretty?” before abducting them. After several children go missing, a pair of teachers from their school use the kids’ gossip and retelling of the tale to track the Slit Mouthed Woman down. The teachers on the case are an unlikely pair of heroes, as one is a divorced mother who lost custody of her daughter due to child abuse and the other emotionally stunted, haunted by memories of his mother’s abuse. There isn’t a great deal of intricate plot to unravel, but the film still mines the familiar tropes of the cycle without stumbling into self parody, although it skirts the line throughout the film. The evils of child abuse weigh heavily on the film, with the Slit Mouthed Woman expressly targeting the children of abuse and neglect using the innocent children to punish the parents.
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St. John’s Wort (2001, Ten Shimoyama) offers another modern take on traditional horror tales, with the conceit being video game developers, who visit a haunted house to get inspiration for the horror game they are working on. Not only does it turn out that one of them is much closer to the evil that lurks in the old mansion, but the line between reality and fantasy get blurred for the viewer as well. In fact, by the end of the film, it is difficult to parse out how much of what was just seen was real and how much of it was the game. Ultimately it doesn’t much matter, as the entire affair is cracking fun with a trippy aesthetic with director Ten Shimoyama utilizing an unnatural color palette with frequent use of on-screen dialogue boxes that echo the visual novel style of video games. In addition to addressing the anxieties over increasingly sophisticated technology, the ugly specter of child abuse is also on display in the film’s bizarre, twist laden final act.
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It is always something special when a film embraces the themes and tropes of its genre, but also manages to make something startlingly original out of ordinary ingredients. Such is the case with Masato Harada’s Inugami (2001). When Akira arrives in a small isolated village, the outsider is greeted with less than open arms from the locals, save for Miki, who finds herself drawn to the stranger. As Miki and Akira’s relationship builds, accusations against Miki also build, leading to tragedy. Miki and her family are believed to be cursed by the Inugami, a kind of dog spirit. Miki’s search for the truth leads her down a very dark path of secrets, including horrifying truths about herself and Akira. While light on anything overtly scary, Harada loads his film with beautiful visuals, especially the scenes of Miki’s papermaking process, which are more sensual than the actual sex scenes in the film.
Although many of the titles are not as well known or revered in the West, Arrow Video’s J-Horror Rising box set is an absolute treat for fans of Japanese horror or horror fans who are looking for some more obscure titles that emphasize atmosphere and dread over gore and jump scares. The films in the set are augmented with interviews, video essays, and audio commentaries from familiar and fresh voices, including Tom Mes, Jasper Sharp, Jonathan Clements, Amber T., and more. ◼
