Death Note is Excellent J-Horror

Beginning in the 1990's Japanese, Korean, and Chinese film makers produced a number of extraordinarily good horror movies: the Ring, the Grudge, Pulse, Spiral, The Eye, were all masterpieces of the genre, and all have been remade for the American market.

Lately, that fountain of grim has produced almost nothing of value. But yesterday I watched Death Note. It was so good I sat there hurting for almost a half hour because I didn't want to push the damn pause button and go pee.

Death Note originated as a manga written by Tsugumi Ohba with art by Takeshi Obata. Manga are Japanese comic books published in paperback form and serialized. I haven't read the manga, nor have I seen and earlier video done in cartoon form. Translating a manga or any other comic book into a live action movie is always a very difficult business, but when it works well it produces a superior product. Some of the aforementioned movies were published as manga before they were filmed.

A young man, Light Yagami, wants to go into law to follow the footsteps of his father, who is a detective. Light wants to bring bad guys to justice, but he is naive. He discovers, to his dismay, that bad guys often get away scot free when witnesses refuse to testify or some other technicality prevents conviction. He suffers a crisis of faith.

At that moment a small book is dropped from the sky and lands before him, somehow protected from the moody rain that is drenching everything else. It turns out to look like something you would buy at Barnes and Noble. Inside the cover are instructions: write the name of someone, and imagine that person's face, and the person will die. Of course the book works as promised, and Light immediately sets about righting the wrongs that disturb him.

The book was dropped by Ryuk, a shinigami, one of the death gods. Ryuk survives by getting all the years of life that would have been enjoyed by someone written into the book. He is a fantastic creature with a sort of devil-mask, clownish face and tattered but effective wings. He likes apples. In the movie, Ryuk is computer generated to look just like the image from the manga. That is the only special effect that the movie employs.

Light goes about his business with vigor, and soon everyone realizes that someone is killing off a lot of rapists, murderers, and general scoundrels. The mysterious avenger is known in popular (i.e. internet) culture as Kira. Because of this, in part, Light quickly develops a God complex, and becomes absolutely ruthless. The police also realize that there is a vigilante working, and organize an investigation. They turn to "L", a mysterious person who, for much of the movie, communicates with them only via a lap top and distorted voice. This is key, of course, because without a name or face, L cannot be targeted by Kira. Most of the action of the movie turns on the game between L and Kira.

To give you a little taste of the action, L analyzes the timing of the mysterious deaths and plots them on a single page chart. It looks like a college student's schedule. L determines correctly that Kira is a college student who was not killing anyone when he was in class. That's pretty good action for a comic book movie.

Two hours in I realized that the story couldn't be resolved in the time left. Sure enough, it ends in the middle. I cursed the TV and rushed to order the second part from Netflix.

Death Note contains some useful reflections on the nature of justice and the corruption that can come from wanting to do justice. But it doesn't go very deep into those questions. It does something as good or better for a movie: it builds the action on those reflections. The plot is frequently marred by too much explanation, but that is about its only flaw. It features a lot of death, but no gore at all. The actors are all superb, by the standards of the genre. They are selected largely because they look like manga figures, with a lot of long, straight hair partially obscuring their faces.

Best of all, the battle is a battle of wits. The action almost totally consists of the stratagems of the two main characters. One of the detectives, who looks a lot like Jack Lord in Hawaii Five-O, keeps admonishing L that "this is not a game!" But of course, that is precisely what it is.

Death Note is delicious, if you like this sort of thing. I really do.

Asian Horror Online Free: Revengeful Ghost & Real Estate

That will catch on your spam filter!

I can make a case for serious attention to this genre. I think all cultures have more in common with one another than differences, but the differences are delightful and instructive. That is especially so when they are disturbing to one another.

In the late 90's a series of Asian Horror movies were made that had a tremendous impact on the horror film genre. The Ring, The Eye, The Grudge, Pulse, and Spiral, were the most important. The Ring was the best of them, based on the superb horror novel by Koji Suzuki. All but the last have seen American made versions. On the American Ring can compare, and I think it might be even better than the American version. Spiral was brilliant, but perhaps too ethereal for mass market.

I recently discovered a website, Asian-Horror-Movies.com, that has a very large collection of Asian movies that you can watch online. All of the above mentioned movies are available. The quality is not great, but the price is right and they are there on demand.

Ju-on, or The Grudge (2003) was one of the most frightening ghost stories I have ever enjoyed. At the small risk of spoiling the surprise, it is a series of small stories, each with the same horrific ending. But American fans may not know that the Japanese movie was itself a remake of a version made for Japanese TV in 2000. I just finished watching that.

The TV version is altogether cheap in production. Poor special effects, modest cinematography (though I can't really judge from the online presentation), good but not great acting, and a very slow pace, all distinguish the TV effort from its polished 2003 incarnation. It was nonetheless marvelously effective. It also fills out the story a bit more.

SPOILER ALERT.

The center of the action in both movies is a modest Japanese house. In the TV version, the real estate angle is prominent. How do you unload a house that is inhabited by a ghost that gobbles up people whole? Answer: you lie. In the later version, there's a social service angle. Social workers show up to take care of people living in the house, and they get gobbled up along with everyone else.

The first version makes more explicit what the movie version mostly hinted at: a jealous husband murders his wife and son, and that sets off the chain of events. The boy ghost, Toshio, appears frequently. He is a tragic figure, but all the more terrifying in so far as he isn't malevolent but always signals the approach of mommy ghost. It is her rage that is immortal and insatiable. Anyone who enters the house is acquired by her, like the target of a smart missile, and once acquired there is no defense. Anyone who comes into close contact with someone who is already cursed risks infection. "The grudge," or curse, is like a virus: it propagates itself.

Ju-on is in one respect more like Western horror than typical A-Horror. In the latter, the spirit world leaks into the living world more or less like an ecological disaster. It doesn't have to be anyone's fault. In W-Horror, the root of all evil is sin. In Ju-on, adultery that is the root cause of the terror. The violation of marriage vows opens a rift in the fabric between worlds, with all manner of unfortunate consequences. Tell that to a few Republican governors and Senators. Another interesting thing about the TV version is that it reveals a deep angst in Japanese society about children. There is a current of tremendous guilt about having and protecting children that flows just under the surface of the film. In a nation that has virtually stopped having children, it's no wonder.

The alternate versions of Ju-On are book marked with two of the most frightening scenes in modern movie-making. At the beginning of the TV version, a woman walks over a railway overpass and then down backstreet. She stops dead before an unexceptional house (the house) and looks in. If you've seen the other version first, that brief response to the malevolent presence is very effective.

In the second version, after nearly everyone has been consumed by the ghost, the camera focuses on a utility pole with a missing persons notice tacked to it. You see the faces of missing girls and boys. Where did they go? Then the camera pans out to the street. It's empty. Paper is blowing in the wind. No cars. No people. Can we conceive that the anger of one young woman, stored in an empty house like a super battery, could eat the whole world? That is a real estate crisis.

If you like a good spooky story, check out Asian-Horror-Movies.com. Tell 'em I sent ya.