Genre in Horror

The conversation about how slasher and a lot of horror movies present christian ideals got me looking at some of the other different horror movie types to come out recently.

To me, one of the biggest subgenre to come out is what some people class as j-horror. This type of horror movie is usually either asian, or a remake of an asian movie. There tends to be a few similarities, such as the ghosts themselves, who are usually depicted as childlike and able to move in a distorted and unnatural way. The movies almost always deal with outsiders, which I believe stems from Japan's culture.

Japan, being an island has always had a history of being slightly xenophobic. As so, it shouldn't be surprising to see that the main character in j-horror tends to be either someone new to the entire country, or to a house or area. Unlike american ghost movies, where more often than not the main character is tied to the ghosts in some way, j-horror's protagonists rarely have that type of connection.

The continous use of technology is also something many j-horror movies have in common. In the Ring we have the ghost use the phone and the television to reach it's victims. Cellphones have overtaken japanese youth culture, perhaps more than in any other culture. As so, the idea of cellphones in j-horror movies represent two things. One, without them many people wouldn't see the movies as true to life, and secondly, they allow people to in their back of their minds to think 'this could happen to me."