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Tonight I went to see Ju-On. I had tried to get it on video once but it wasn't yet available for US VCRs. Anyway, I very much enjoyed myself. There's a shower scene where...well, you know how Janet Leigh gets stabbed to death in her shower? I'd almost rather have that happen then the little thing that happens to this woman. And the scene with the cats. Yes.
I haven't seen enough Asian horror movies. Really just Ringu, Jian Gui and this. I really love the way Ringu and Ju-On can make little things so disturbing. In Ju-On the ghosts leave torn paper around and knock things over. But because this is a Japanese house it's incredible scary. If something's out of place there must be a demon in the house. Even when the characters sleep it's incredibly neat, with the sheets pulled straight across them as they lay on their back. That's why in Ringu when the heroine wakes up and looks at the fouton next to her and it looks like it's empty with the blankets just scrunched up on it it's scary--because the sheets should NEVER be messed up in this movie!!!
Anyway, I feel in watching J-Horror that there's this whole cultural language I'm not getting but makes it enjoyable anyone. I'm not talking National Geographic here, like such-and-such is supposed to be a history or anthropology lesson. I just mean...well, there are certain things that come up in Ringu and Ju-On: the little boy, the slithering woman, the messy moments, rage, and these things seem to mean something important. This is one reason I so prefer Ringu to The Ring. In the original I feel like I know what Sadako is on some level. Like she's chaos, like the eruption her mother predicted. She's everything not spoken of in a strict society. Not only will she pop in uninvited, but she won't take off her shoes and put on those little slippers before she comes to get you!! In The Ring it's all over the place, imo. She doesn't really mean anything and her story makes no sense--she's obviously an Evil Creepy Kid so why was she adopted and then shunned? And why the barn? Feh. I just didn't like it.
Incidentally, there was one wonderful moment in Jian Gui when someone is hiding from something scary and she pushes all this stuff in front of the door to barricade it. And then--oh no! She forgot she was in Japan! The doors open sideways! (Okay, not all the doors, but still it's funny.)
I found myself again comparing these ghost movies to American ones like The Others and The Innocents and wondering about whether we have different associations with ghosts. There's a lot we have in common, but I wonder if there's some general associations that differ from one country to another.
This led me to remembering the first Japanese movies I used to watch which were, of course, the monster movies. People associate them with athe atomic age but it fascinates me how different the Japanese monster movies are from all the American movies about monsters created by atomic testing. The American movies pretty much all come down to the same line: "They tampered in God's domain." What's cool about the Japanese monsters is that while they might be destroying Tokyo on their first visit, they often show up to fight against an invading monster in the sequel. And they often like kids. One of my favorites has always been Gamera Vs. Monster X, where the two boys have to drive a yellow submarine inside Gamera to save him so he can fight the bad guy. Years later I found myself thinking about Gamera when I was watching Digimon (I did a book for them so I was watching a lot of it at once.)
Seeing those kids with their monsters I thought there just had to be some cultural understanding about kids and monsters, because the US just can't write the kind of human/monster relationships that seem such a staple in Japan. Pokemon uses it too. In fact, there's a great Dexter's Lab where Dexter goes to Japan and he is interested in fighting monsters like Digimon. Unfortunately he accidentally awakens a giant Godzilla-type monster from a volcano where he was "trapped by the great scientists of the 60's." It was a great acknowledgement of the great ancestors of today's monsters! I wish I had some understanding where I could sort of explain where this story comes from or something. Like if we were talking about the US atomic monster movies we could talk about that whole American Titanic-ish mentality.
After the movie I helped out at this cocktail party/screening of Greendale. Neil Young is the cutest man. He's actually a large hobbit, I think. He had even "put on his head a tall shapeless felt bag, which he called a hat." Just like Sam wore when they left the Shire. When he came in his friends were heading towards the theater and he just strolled over to us at the table instead to say hi. Then when he was leaving he came and smiled good-bye again. He put his beer down on the table and slid it over to me.
Then he gave me a thumb. The thumb-up. It was just the cutest thing I've ever seen. Neil Young, with the bag and the grin and the thumb. I gave him a thumb back. And I kept the bottle, for some reason. It just seemed sad to leave it there after the thumb.
I haven't seen enough Asian horror movies. Really just Ringu, Jian Gui and this. I really love the way Ringu and Ju-On can make little things so disturbing. In Ju-On the ghosts leave torn paper around and knock things over. But because this is a Japanese house it's incredible scary. If something's out of place there must be a demon in the house. Even when the characters sleep it's incredibly neat, with the sheets pulled straight across them as they lay on their back. That's why in Ringu when the heroine wakes up and looks at the fouton next to her and it looks like it's empty with the blankets just scrunched up on it it's scary--because the sheets should NEVER be messed up in this movie!!!
Anyway, I feel in watching J-Horror that there's this whole cultural language I'm not getting but makes it enjoyable anyone. I'm not talking National Geographic here, like such-and-such is supposed to be a history or anthropology lesson. I just mean...well, there are certain things that come up in Ringu and Ju-On: the little boy, the slithering woman, the messy moments, rage, and these things seem to mean something important. This is one reason I so prefer Ringu to The Ring. In the original I feel like I know what Sadako is on some level. Like she's chaos, like the eruption her mother predicted. She's everything not spoken of in a strict society. Not only will she pop in uninvited, but she won't take off her shoes and put on those little slippers before she comes to get you!! In The Ring it's all over the place, imo. She doesn't really mean anything and her story makes no sense--she's obviously an Evil Creepy Kid so why was she adopted and then shunned? And why the barn? Feh. I just didn't like it.
Incidentally, there was one wonderful moment in Jian Gui when someone is hiding from something scary and she pushes all this stuff in front of the door to barricade it. And then--oh no! She forgot she was in Japan! The doors open sideways! (Okay, not all the doors, but still it's funny.)
I found myself again comparing these ghost movies to American ones like The Others and The Innocents and wondering about whether we have different associations with ghosts. There's a lot we have in common, but I wonder if there's some general associations that differ from one country to another.
This led me to remembering the first Japanese movies I used to watch which were, of course, the monster movies. People associate them with athe atomic age but it fascinates me how different the Japanese monster movies are from all the American movies about monsters created by atomic testing. The American movies pretty much all come down to the same line: "They tampered in God's domain." What's cool about the Japanese monsters is that while they might be destroying Tokyo on their first visit, they often show up to fight against an invading monster in the sequel. And they often like kids. One of my favorites has always been Gamera Vs. Monster X, where the two boys have to drive a yellow submarine inside Gamera to save him so he can fight the bad guy. Years later I found myself thinking about Gamera when I was watching Digimon (I did a book for them so I was watching a lot of it at once.)
Seeing those kids with their monsters I thought there just had to be some cultural understanding about kids and monsters, because the US just can't write the kind of human/monster relationships that seem such a staple in Japan. Pokemon uses it too. In fact, there's a great Dexter's Lab where Dexter goes to Japan and he is interested in fighting monsters like Digimon. Unfortunately he accidentally awakens a giant Godzilla-type monster from a volcano where he was "trapped by the great scientists of the 60's." It was a great acknowledgement of the great ancestors of today's monsters! I wish I had some understanding where I could sort of explain where this story comes from or something. Like if we were talking about the US atomic monster movies we could talk about that whole American Titanic-ish mentality.
After the movie I helped out at this cocktail party/screening of Greendale. Neil Young is the cutest man. He's actually a large hobbit, I think. He had even "put on his head a tall shapeless felt bag, which he called a hat." Just like Sam wore when they left the Shire. When he came in his friends were heading towards the theater and he just strolled over to us at the table instead to say hi. Then when he was leaving he came and smiled good-bye again. He put his beer down on the table and slid it over to me.
Then he gave me a thumb. The thumb-up. It was just the cutest thing I've ever seen. Neil Young, with the bag and the grin and the thumb. I gave him a thumb back. And I kept the bottle, for some reason. It just seemed sad to leave it there after the thumb.
