Movies
Scary True Stories: Summer Special 2018
Well before Ringu and Ju-on turned the Japanese horror genre on its head, the front-runners of the genre were honing their skills working on the Honto ni Atta Kowai anthologies. Not that they were great films, but historically it's a series with considerable significance. Hence why I didn't mind checking out this 2018 TV special. Films like these are decent enough horror filler, but they aren't half as scary as they used to be. The anthology setup makes certain there's enough variety and some of the shorts do manage to create a bit of tension, but it's mostly just familiar territory that's being rehashed. Not terrible, but not very scary either.Read all
Scary True Stories: Summer Special 2011
The OG series of contemporary Japanese horror cinema. All the greats started their horror career working on the first few entries (the early 90s), and Norio Tsuruta returned to co-direct this 2011 summer special. The film is nothing special, but that's because it's stayed true to its roots. You get five stereotypical Japanese haunt stories, which means ghosts appear out of the shadows and bother the living with their unresolved problems. The film sticks to the clichés it established two decades earlier, they just lost most of their effectiveness by now. It's not a terrible film, just a very generic one. The fact that it's an anthology makes it a little easier to get through though.Read all