The J-Horror Virus (2023) Movie Script
1
- What we would call J-horror
is something that's quite
specific, not only in terms
of the style of the films,
but also in terms
of the period
in which they were made.
- The female vengeful spirit,
Sadako being the most famous,
but usually a figure
of a woman or a child
or a young girl in a
white dress with long,
black hair often
obscuring her face.
- J-horror is a group of
films by a fairly small group
of directors that all came out
within a fairly short period
of time, and they
tended to share a lot
of similar themes and
characters and a kind
of similar aesthetic.
And they were made by
people who-- a lot of whom
went to the same
school together,
and who were also
film scholars.
So these were people who
were making movies, watching
each other's movies, writing
about each other's movies,
and really kind of being
influenced by each other.
- In both "The Ring"
and "Dark Water,"
We have this vengeful spirit,
who drowned, basically.
In the case of
Sadako, in a well.
In the case of "Dark
Water," in a water tank,
and so you have this image
of this girl with long, black
hair who's dripping water.
And I think water shows up
in a lot of these films,
and that comes back to the
fact that a lot of the films
really are connected to ideas
about pregnancy and birth
and wombs and that just being
kind of scary and creepy.
So that sort of water
imagery pops up a lot.
- This is just a
really familiar figure
from Japanese folklore
and literature,
the idea of the yurei,
the kind of vengeful
spirit figure,
the yamanba, the sort
of mountain witch.
Look in a lot of places in
Japanese art, short stories,
in theater, and
you will definitely
find a lot of
images of a woman,
white dress, long
black hair, kind
of haunting different spaces.
- You had this movie called
or "Psychic Vision,"
which was directed by Teruyoshi
Shi and is kind of a found
footage horror movie.
It's about a sort of
haunted audio cassette
and this footage that's
found dealing with that.
- Because J-horror had
been from its beginning,
from its inception, in the
early '90s, and this is
important because the year of
the collapsed bubble economy,
the collapse of the bubble
economy is the same year that
the very first J-horror
title ever came out,
which is "Scary True Stories."
Both happened in 1991.
Probably because the J-horror
style focuses so much
on the everyday, lived-in
reality of regular people
and shows how this reality can
quickly crumble and give way
to uncertainty,
there is probably
in that fictional motif, that
fictional narrative template,
that fictional stylistic trope,
something that connected very
closely, I think, to this
experience that a lot of people
were having in
their daily life.
- It was in 1994 that what
we-- what would become known
as J-horror moved from its
straight to video market onto
television with the
TV series ,
"The Haunted School."
Confusingly, there's a film
series of exactly the same name
that ran concurrently, but
there were several series
of this that ran throughout
the '90s, and this basically
brought together
all of the talents
that we know from J-horror.
Directors like Kiyoshi
Kurosawa and Hideo
Nakata and the
screenwriters Hiroshi
Takahashi and Chiaki Konaka.
Brought them all together.
And later, Takashi
Shimizu also.
- "The Haunted School"
series is where J-horror
became not just a
genre or a style,
but it became a movement.
- "The Ghost Actress,"
or ,
also known as "Don't Look Up,"
was the first really theatrical
J-horror and the film
that sort of moved Hideo
Nakata into the foreground.
It's basically a haunted ghost
story on a-- in a film studio,
so it unfolds quite a lot
like "Jaganre," actually,
with celluloids, the ghost
manifesting itself on celluloid
rather than on audiotape.
- The film school of Tokyo
was formed in the late 1990s,
so just as J-horror and the
people who had been making
J-horror had become more
or less famous phenomena
and famous filmmakers.
And because I think the
J-horror movement was also
an intellectual movement, they
thought intellectually about
how should we make these films
to create certain effects,
they really thought about
what this means as a question
of cinema to make scary films.
And so there was always
a theoretical aspect
to the J-horror movement.
- J-horror also deals a
lot with urban loneliness
and isolation, particularly in
the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
And so, in addition to stories
about ghosts and monsters
and supernatural
things, you also just
have the very everyday
dread and fear
of being a person living
alone in a huge city
and maybe feeling
really isolated
and alone, even though
you're in a crowd.
- It's kind of like a stain on
the order of things, you know,
and it radiates outward into
the normality around it.
- "The Ring" was originally
released on a double bill with
or "Spiral"
directed by Joji Idah,
and this was the direct
adaptation of the sequel novel.
- The success of "The Ring"
films led to a sort of mini
wave in Japan of films
fashioned in this
J-horror style,
and, confusingly,
this crept overseas as well.
We had in Korea an unofficial
remake of "The Ring"
called "Ring Virus" in 1999.
"The Ring" film obviously
called for a final
installment,
and that was "Ring Zero,"
and this time,
the story went back
to Koji Suzuki,
and it was based on a short
story called "Birthday,"
which was published in an
anthology in 1999
by Koji Suzuki,
which explored
various aspects
of the "Ring" universe,
and went back to look at--
this particular story,
went back to look at Sadako,
and when she was a teenager.
- Why did you try
to kill your baby?
Why?
- Because my baby told me to.
- "The Ring" really just
opened the floodgates.
Because it was such a
massive theatrical success,
it was followed by a
lot of sequels and sort
of like spin-offs.
- Films that took a little bit
different approach to horror,
but still using elements
borrowed from J-horror,
such as a film like "Audition,"
for example, used the long,
black hair to very good
effect, but to create a very,
very different film with
nothing supernatural in it.
- One of my favorite
Takashi Shimizu films,
actually was made outside
of the "Ju-On Cycle".
It was a film
called ,
"The Stranger from Afar", and
this was part of a project
made in conjunction with
the film school of
Tokyo, .
It was written
by Chiaki Konaka
and actually starred
Shinya Tsukamoto,
who is, of course,
better known
for his work
behind the camera
such as "Tetsuo the Iron Man."
It was shot on digital
video and very much, I
think, foregrounded
this use of technology
with this story of-- of
Tsukamoto being a news
cameraman who's
obsessed with, like,
confronting fear and
capturing it on videotape.
- Well, the funny
thing about "Ju-On"
is that it came around at
a time where it seemed like
J-horror had run out of steam.
And certainly as a genre of
theatrically released films,
after the success of "Ring,"
in very quick succession,
various companies had started
making films in
the same style,
so there had been a horror
boom in the J-horror boom.
But it was running out
of steam, by 2000, 2001.
And in 2001, for example, you
get Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film
"Pulse," Masato
Harada's film "Inugami,"
and both of those didn't do
very well at all theatrically.
And so for "Ju-On"
to come along
after that and become
a success was kind
of a puzzling development.
- "Ju-On" is the
start of, essentially,
the second era of
J-horror and the second
generation of J-horror.
- You can't have my son.
So take me.
- Rachel!
No!
Rachel!
Rachel!
- So, one reason that
J-horror became really popular
in the United
States, for example,
when it did in the early
2000s, I would say,
it was really just kind
of a case of good timing,
because this was a period when
US horror had been dominated
for quite a while by
mostly really gory
and violent films and
slasher films, and it
was getting kind of tired.
And I think people were just
sort of over that plot line,
and then you had a
film like "The Ring"
that showed up that was very
much a callback to horror from
the 1960s and 1970s, movies
like "The Haunting of Hill
House," that were just
much more concerned
with atmospheric dread.
- And I promise you,
I will make it fun.
And just think, the first
stamp in your new passport
is going to be Japan.
How cool is that?
- That is cool.
- It's okay now.
It's okay.
- Horror as a genre is better
when it has the opportunity
to pick and beg and
borrow from as many people
and countries and
cultures as possible.
And if we look at how J-horror
sort of revived horror
in the United States
in the early 2000s,
just kind of gave it
a shot in the arm,
where it had been sort of
lifeless for a little while,
I think we can see
how J-horror just
proved influential
for a lot of people
who are making movies now.
- The remakes of "Ring," "The
Grudge," and "Dark Water,"
for example, meant that
there was now a big
audience overseas for J-horror
films or J-horror film remakes.
And this led to the producer
of the original "Ring"
films and "The
Grudge", Taka Ishii,
developing a strand of films
called J-horror theater.
And these included works
by Masayuki Ochiai,
Norio Tsuruta, Kiyoshi
Kurosawa, all of the big names
in J-horror.
What I think was interesting
about these films
was that they were
explicitly marketed
as J-horror under this
J-horror theater banner.
There were some interesting
films amongst them, for sure,
but the cycle
actually petered out.
And I think in 2010, when
the J-horror theater was
discontinued, we can
mark a sense of closure
to this idea of J-horror
as a self-contained genre
with many of the same creative
people working within it.
Many of these directors have
gone on to explore their ideas
in other forms and other
films, and at the same time,
you've had a lot of
new blood come in,
notably people like
Koji Shiraishi.
- Mari Asato's "Bilocation"
is just such a meaty film.
It is trafficking in the
traditions of J-horror,
but it is very
much its own thing.
And, even more
importantly, I think
that the kind of old school
J-horror, even though it
featured many female
characters and had
a big focus on domestic space
and kind of domestic issues,
there really weren't many
women working on those films,
whether they were
writing or directing.
And so with Mari
Asato's films, you just
see a different perspective.
- The global impact of J-horror
has certainly been profound,
but I don't mean in
just carbon copies
of films featuring girls,
ghosts, with long black hair.
But just in that sense
of atmosphere and dread
I think is very much-- has
filtered into horror filmmaking
from across the
globe, and that's
going to be the lasting
legacy of J-horror.
- The idea of curses
that never end,
basically things going
viral, has been a narrative--
has been a motif
in the narratives
of J-horror films since the--
since the very beginning.
- What we would call J-horror
is something that's quite
specific, not only in terms
of the style of the films,
but also in terms
of the period
in which they were made.
- The female vengeful spirit,
Sadako being the most famous,
but usually a figure
of a woman or a child
or a young girl in a
white dress with long,
black hair often
obscuring her face.
- J-horror is a group of
films by a fairly small group
of directors that all came out
within a fairly short period
of time, and they
tended to share a lot
of similar themes and
characters and a kind
of similar aesthetic.
And they were made by
people who-- a lot of whom
went to the same
school together,
and who were also
film scholars.
So these were people who
were making movies, watching
each other's movies, writing
about each other's movies,
and really kind of being
influenced by each other.
- In both "The Ring"
and "Dark Water,"
We have this vengeful spirit,
who drowned, basically.
In the case of
Sadako, in a well.
In the case of "Dark
Water," in a water tank,
and so you have this image
of this girl with long, black
hair who's dripping water.
And I think water shows up
in a lot of these films,
and that comes back to the
fact that a lot of the films
really are connected to ideas
about pregnancy and birth
and wombs and that just being
kind of scary and creepy.
So that sort of water
imagery pops up a lot.
- This is just a
really familiar figure
from Japanese folklore
and literature,
the idea of the yurei,
the kind of vengeful
spirit figure,
the yamanba, the sort
of mountain witch.
Look in a lot of places in
Japanese art, short stories,
in theater, and
you will definitely
find a lot of
images of a woman,
white dress, long
black hair, kind
of haunting different spaces.
- You had this movie called
or "Psychic Vision,"
which was directed by Teruyoshi
Shi and is kind of a found
footage horror movie.
It's about a sort of
haunted audio cassette
and this footage that's
found dealing with that.
- Because J-horror had
been from its beginning,
from its inception, in the
early '90s, and this is
important because the year of
the collapsed bubble economy,
the collapse of the bubble
economy is the same year that
the very first J-horror
title ever came out,
which is "Scary True Stories."
Both happened in 1991.
Probably because the J-horror
style focuses so much
on the everyday, lived-in
reality of regular people
and shows how this reality can
quickly crumble and give way
to uncertainty,
there is probably
in that fictional motif, that
fictional narrative template,
that fictional stylistic trope,
something that connected very
closely, I think, to this
experience that a lot of people
were having in
their daily life.
- It was in 1994 that what
we-- what would become known
as J-horror moved from its
straight to video market onto
television with the
TV series ,
"The Haunted School."
Confusingly, there's a film
series of exactly the same name
that ran concurrently, but
there were several series
of this that ran throughout
the '90s, and this basically
brought together
all of the talents
that we know from J-horror.
Directors like Kiyoshi
Kurosawa and Hideo
Nakata and the
screenwriters Hiroshi
Takahashi and Chiaki Konaka.
Brought them all together.
And later, Takashi
Shimizu also.
- "The Haunted School"
series is where J-horror
became not just a
genre or a style,
but it became a movement.
- "The Ghost Actress,"
or ,
also known as "Don't Look Up,"
was the first really theatrical
J-horror and the film
that sort of moved Hideo
Nakata into the foreground.
It's basically a haunted ghost
story on a-- in a film studio,
so it unfolds quite a lot
like "Jaganre," actually,
with celluloids, the ghost
manifesting itself on celluloid
rather than on audiotape.
- The film school of Tokyo
was formed in the late 1990s,
so just as J-horror and the
people who had been making
J-horror had become more
or less famous phenomena
and famous filmmakers.
And because I think the
J-horror movement was also
an intellectual movement, they
thought intellectually about
how should we make these films
to create certain effects,
they really thought about
what this means as a question
of cinema to make scary films.
And so there was always
a theoretical aspect
to the J-horror movement.
- J-horror also deals a
lot with urban loneliness
and isolation, particularly in
the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
And so, in addition to stories
about ghosts and monsters
and supernatural
things, you also just
have the very everyday
dread and fear
of being a person living
alone in a huge city
and maybe feeling
really isolated
and alone, even though
you're in a crowd.
- It's kind of like a stain on
the order of things, you know,
and it radiates outward into
the normality around it.
- "The Ring" was originally
released on a double bill with
or "Spiral"
directed by Joji Idah,
and this was the direct
adaptation of the sequel novel.
- The success of "The Ring"
films led to a sort of mini
wave in Japan of films
fashioned in this
J-horror style,
and, confusingly,
this crept overseas as well.
We had in Korea an unofficial
remake of "The Ring"
called "Ring Virus" in 1999.
"The Ring" film obviously
called for a final
installment,
and that was "Ring Zero,"
and this time,
the story went back
to Koji Suzuki,
and it was based on a short
story called "Birthday,"
which was published in an
anthology in 1999
by Koji Suzuki,
which explored
various aspects
of the "Ring" universe,
and went back to look at--
this particular story,
went back to look at Sadako,
and when she was a teenager.
- Why did you try
to kill your baby?
Why?
- Because my baby told me to.
- "The Ring" really just
opened the floodgates.
Because it was such a
massive theatrical success,
it was followed by a
lot of sequels and sort
of like spin-offs.
- Films that took a little bit
different approach to horror,
but still using elements
borrowed from J-horror,
such as a film like "Audition,"
for example, used the long,
black hair to very good
effect, but to create a very,
very different film with
nothing supernatural in it.
- One of my favorite
Takashi Shimizu films,
actually was made outside
of the "Ju-On Cycle".
It was a film
called ,
"The Stranger from Afar", and
this was part of a project
made in conjunction with
the film school of
Tokyo, .
It was written
by Chiaki Konaka
and actually starred
Shinya Tsukamoto,
who is, of course,
better known
for his work
behind the camera
such as "Tetsuo the Iron Man."
It was shot on digital
video and very much, I
think, foregrounded
this use of technology
with this story of-- of
Tsukamoto being a news
cameraman who's
obsessed with, like,
confronting fear and
capturing it on videotape.
- Well, the funny
thing about "Ju-On"
is that it came around at
a time where it seemed like
J-horror had run out of steam.
And certainly as a genre of
theatrically released films,
after the success of "Ring,"
in very quick succession,
various companies had started
making films in
the same style,
so there had been a horror
boom in the J-horror boom.
But it was running out
of steam, by 2000, 2001.
And in 2001, for example, you
get Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film
"Pulse," Masato
Harada's film "Inugami,"
and both of those didn't do
very well at all theatrically.
And so for "Ju-On"
to come along
after that and become
a success was kind
of a puzzling development.
- "Ju-On" is the
start of, essentially,
the second era of
J-horror and the second
generation of J-horror.
- You can't have my son.
So take me.
- Rachel!
No!
Rachel!
Rachel!
- So, one reason that
J-horror became really popular
in the United
States, for example,
when it did in the early
2000s, I would say,
it was really just kind
of a case of good timing,
because this was a period when
US horror had been dominated
for quite a while by
mostly really gory
and violent films and
slasher films, and it
was getting kind of tired.
And I think people were just
sort of over that plot line,
and then you had a
film like "The Ring"
that showed up that was very
much a callback to horror from
the 1960s and 1970s, movies
like "The Haunting of Hill
House," that were just
much more concerned
with atmospheric dread.
- And I promise you,
I will make it fun.
And just think, the first
stamp in your new passport
is going to be Japan.
How cool is that?
- That is cool.
- It's okay now.
It's okay.
- Horror as a genre is better
when it has the opportunity
to pick and beg and
borrow from as many people
and countries and
cultures as possible.
And if we look at how J-horror
sort of revived horror
in the United States
in the early 2000s,
just kind of gave it
a shot in the arm,
where it had been sort of
lifeless for a little while,
I think we can see
how J-horror just
proved influential
for a lot of people
who are making movies now.
- The remakes of "Ring," "The
Grudge," and "Dark Water,"
for example, meant that
there was now a big
audience overseas for J-horror
films or J-horror film remakes.
And this led to the producer
of the original "Ring"
films and "The
Grudge", Taka Ishii,
developing a strand of films
called J-horror theater.
And these included works
by Masayuki Ochiai,
Norio Tsuruta, Kiyoshi
Kurosawa, all of the big names
in J-horror.
What I think was interesting
about these films
was that they were
explicitly marketed
as J-horror under this
J-horror theater banner.
There were some interesting
films amongst them, for sure,
but the cycle
actually petered out.
And I think in 2010, when
the J-horror theater was
discontinued, we can
mark a sense of closure
to this idea of J-horror
as a self-contained genre
with many of the same creative
people working within it.
Many of these directors have
gone on to explore their ideas
in other forms and other
films, and at the same time,
you've had a lot of
new blood come in,
notably people like
Koji Shiraishi.
- Mari Asato's "Bilocation"
is just such a meaty film.
It is trafficking in the
traditions of J-horror,
but it is very
much its own thing.
And, even more
importantly, I think
that the kind of old school
J-horror, even though it
featured many female
characters and had
a big focus on domestic space
and kind of domestic issues,
there really weren't many
women working on those films,
whether they were
writing or directing.
And so with Mari
Asato's films, you just
see a different perspective.
- The global impact of J-horror
has certainly been profound,
but I don't mean in
just carbon copies
of films featuring girls,
ghosts, with long black hair.
But just in that sense
of atmosphere and dread
I think is very much-- has
filtered into horror filmmaking
from across the
globe, and that's
going to be the lasting
legacy of J-horror.
- The idea of curses
that never end,
basically things going
viral, has been a narrative--
has been a motif
in the narratives
of J-horror films since the--
since the very beginning.