The film was a box office success - and like any horror boon, sequels and remakes were soon in the offing. But Miike’s alternating off-brand humor and absolute devotion to infusing popcorn films with mature subject matter revitalized One Missed Call at a time when the genre absolutely needed it the most. Similar themes had been broached before with the imploding families at the heart of Shimizu’s Ju-on and the internet specters of Kurosawa’s Pulse.
But it’s in this plain-faced depiction of rote J-Horror tropes that Miike begins an earnest exploration of substantive issues within Japanese culture: a suppression of talking about trauma, as well as a growing concern with society’s obsession with mobile technology.
One Missed Call is a film that dares its audience to not take it seriously - like Ring, it features a final girl structure of quickly picked off characters, with all sorts of schoolgirl rumors and ancient legends in between. By stripping away what comforts horror provided against their scares - tidy endings, solutions to supernatural problems, tackling disturbing real-world subject matters like trauma and societal loneliness - J-Horror forced me to wallow in what was truly terrifying…and I needed more. That film blew up my previous sense of what rules horror could have, with its fractured, non-linear storytelling and ghosts who couldn’t give a damn about being understood or set free. Shortly after, I caught up with Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-on: the Grudge. I’ve since grown to love those, too, but the measured psychological torment that defined The Ring and its Japanese predecessor Ring was cinematic catnip for me. Gore Verbinski’s The Ring had a hell of an impact on me, as someone used to the chamber horror of classic Universal Monster flicks and one wholly turned off by the creep of the genre towards Hostel, Saw, and other gory delights. It’s no coincidence that my love of slow-burn horror and all things dread developed hand in hand with the J-Horror boom of the 2000s. From the cult and genre fare of Arrow Video to the artful cinema of Arrow Academy, this column is devoted to their weird and wonderful output. Arrow Heads - UK-based Arrow Films has quickly become one of the most exciting and dependable names in home video curation and distribution, creating gorgeous Blu-ray releases with high quality artwork and packaging, and bursting with supplemental content, often of their own creation.
0 kommentar(er)
