Asian horror films were dominated by exceptionally bad B-movies until films such as the Ring and Ju-on hit the screens. Ju-on, later remade by Sam Raimi, of Evil Dead and Spider-man fame, was one of AsiaPundit’s first re-introductions to Asian horror… and it was darn creepy (Mrs AsiaPundit, who generally embraces Mr AP’s love of zombie films, couldn’t watch).
Why was a low-budget film so effective at scaring the Gaijin, those who were raised on the Exorcist and Prince of Darkness? Possibly because the Westerners couldn’t figure out why the ghost of a child would be so keen on killing everybody. Japundit explains.:
In many Western stories, ghosts are often motivated by the same things as living people namely the pursuit of justice for wrongdoings. The ghost of a murdered person will seek vengeance on the person or persons responsible for their death.
If a ghost is malevolent, it often turns out they were a bad person in life — as in the back-story to the main ghost character in the Poltergeist (1982-1986) movies.
To understand the nature of the supernatural entity of “The Grudge,” one has to understand Japanese belief in spirits and the supernatural.
In the book Ghosts and the Japanese: Cultural Experience in Japanese Death Legends by Michiko Iwasaka, there is a passage which is a direct echo of the opening lines of the movie:
“Anyone who dies under great emotional stress creates an energy which is not easily dissipated; these yurei [ghosts], thus, have an impact on the local environment. . .”
This type of spirit is called a goryo — vengeful ghost. A goryo, however, is less like a consciously aware ghost that plots revenge and would be more familiar to Western audiences. A goryo is more like the energy of the emotion created at the time of death. And to some degree it represents the unconscious mind free of the limitations and morals of the conscious analytic side.
Formal belief in goryo can be traced to the Heian Period (794-1185) when goryo were thought to be the angry spirits of political enemies that had died in exile or had been executed.
Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, northeast asia, puppy
