I am interested in the history of Asian horror films

Kuroneko

In fact, there is a longer tradition of ghosts in Asian horror films, as opposed to monsters in Western horror. The post title says that I am interested in it, but really I don’t actually know much about it. By some definitions of horror, the Mushishi anime could be – some of the mushi are so disturbing and dangerous that they could just as well inspire horror. “Kuroneko” is called a horror movie, but primarily it actually is a ghost story.

In many aspects, “Kuroneko” reminded me of “Ugetsu Monogatari”, especially with the “ghost woman lures men into her illusionary house” element. erotic, and I agree with that. Nevertheless, it is a very Japanese view of eroticism and seeing a man chase a woman across the room while she giggles and turns around alluringly will always, always baffle me to no end. Seriously. Is sexual teasing really fun if you know exactly that you’ll get what you want anyways? Aren’t these games the very root of misunderstandings in the kind of “When she says no it actually means yes”?

Feminist rants aside, “Kuroneko” is what I’d call a beautiful movie. It certainly is low budget but the decor and attire creates an atmospheric environment where even the Japanese court woman style eyebrows look stylish. Most of the times, I am not really into samurai movies just because I think that the period doesn’t lend itself to beautiful shots as Chinese or Korean period dramas do. (When looking at Japanese period movies, kimonos appear to exist to whore around, but I am digressing back to feminism again.) Samurai almost always look ragged and ridiculous, the aforementioned eyebrows look silly and whitened geisha faces are creepy. Farmers suitably wear kimonos, but they are short and people in a short kimonos just don’t look as good as in the more refined longer version. “Kuroneko” is rather different. It modernizes the traditional attire by just a little bit (although I cannot quite pinpoint what it is specifically) and the characters appear very strongly the way they are supposed to – the samurai look evil and morally degraded, the main character looks attractive and the two women look desirable. In terms of style, this is probably the nicest Japanese film apart from Teshigawara’s masterpieces which are unparalleled in beauty in my book.

At the same time, of course the film doesn’t really make sense. It is quite clear that the two ghosts are the mother and the wife respectively. But then – and this is also in the spirit of the Japanese – the mother would be even more willing to sacrifice her arm (and perhaps, by extension, her life) for her son. But in the film she literally killed her son. Now this might be explained by how the devil which made the mother became more and more demonic throughout the film, but that is implied at best. In any case it makes no sense for a mother to be ultimately less loving than a wife.

In a nutshell, I consider the possibility that I am irrationally biased towards “Kuroneko”. Normally I don’t like horror stories (and this includes Japanese ghost stories as I was fairly bored with Ugetsu) and a story which appears illogical to me. But the illogical aspects came towards the end and by that time, I was already completed smitten with the beauty of the film.