Page 185 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

172 Nightmare Japan

of works like Ochiai Masayuki’s Infection (Kansen, 2004), Tsuruta
Norio’s Premonition (Yogen, 2004), Shimizu Takashi’s Marebito (2004),
and Tsukamoto Shinya’s Vital (2004) variably reveal, the future of
Japanese horror cinema may be very bright indeed.
Given Japanese horror film’s appeal in East Asian and Western
markets, it should come as little surprise that producers eager to cash in
on the genre’s popularity would soon produce both feature length works
and collections of short films, many originally intended for television
broadcast. After all, such market inundation has obvious precedents.
Consider, for instance, the glut of slasher films that flooded US theatres
in the wake of the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween (USA, 1978)
th
and Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13 (USA, 1990). Largely
conforming to the general tropology informing what Vera Dika and Carol
Clover call the ‘stalker cycle’ or the ‘teenie-kill pic’ (1987; 1992),
virtually every major Western holiday soon marked an occasion for
mayhem and carnage. In the majority of such texts, the gory dispatching
of randy young people is followed by the inevitable ‘cat-and-mouse’
conflict between the masked killer and the ‘final girl’, whose combination
of virginal purity and willingness to resort to violence ensures her
survival. Setting aside the copious sequels spawned by Halloween and
th
Friday the 13 , a glimpse at the following titles reveals a formula
stretched to its breaking point: Prom Night (CAN, 1980); New Year’s Evil
(USA, 1980); the New Year’s Eve themed Terror Train (CAN/USA,
1980); Happy Birthday to Me (USA, 1981); My Bloody Valentine (CAN,
1981); and Silent Night, Deadly Night (USA, 1984). Such market glutting
is by no means exclusive to horror films; nevertheless, the preceding list
proves at once instructive and cautionary when one considers the recent
deluge of Japanese horror tales that have found their way on to Japanese
television and have surfaced in the West as anthologies of short films. In
2005 alone, ‘J-horror’ collections like Dark Tales from Japan, Kadokawa
Mystery & Horror Tales, volumes 1-3, J-Horror Anthology: Underworld,
and J-Horror Anthology: Legends were released in the US. When many
of these narratives recycle the same tropes that viewers have seen time
and time again, they risk alienating the very segment of their audience
that once found the genre a refreshing alternative to Western horror film