[Documentary Review] FrightFest: The J-Horror Virus (2023)

Why is Japanese horror so scary? What is the ‘J-horror boom’? Is The Ring the first J-horror film? What makes J-horror a distinct cinematic movement outside of the broader ‘Japanese horror’ umbrella? If the answers to any of these questions have long evaded you, then The J-Horror Virus should just have crawled its way to the top of your watchlist. 

In this well-researched, detailed and insightful documentary, Jasper Sharp (Japanese cinema specialist and author of Behind the Pink Curtain and The Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema) and Sarah Appleton (one of the directors behind the similarly thorough documentary The Found Footage Phenomenon) have put together what may well be the most comprehensive English-language filmic history of a subgenre steeped in mystery and misinformation.

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The roster of interviews featured in The J-Horror Virus is truly impressive, with almost every key filmmaker and writer from the era keenly sharing anecdotes and inspirations; including Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure), Hideo Nakata (Ring, Dark Water), Shin’ya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man), Masayuki Ochiai (Kansen), Takashi Shimizu (Ju-On, Marebito) and Mari Asato (Fatal Frame, Ju-On: Black Ghost). From in front of the camera, the great Rie Ino’o and Takako Fuji, famed for their work as horror icons Sadako Imamura and Kayako Saeki respectively. Other Japanese horror specialists on board to share their expertise are Tom Mes, film critic and author (Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike and Iron Man: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto) and Lindsay Nelson, professor at Meiji University, researcher and author (Circulating Fear: Japanese Horror, Fractured Realities, and New Media). 

Guided by this powerhouse of a cast, The J-Horror Virus thoughtfully traces the subgenre from its true roots, disproving common misconceptions of where the movement started and, while giving the game-changing movie the flowers it so deserves, showing that J-horror did not begin and end with Ring. The contributions of low-budget, DTV anthologies like Scary True Stories and School Ghost Story have long deserved recognition for the influence they had on the J-horrors that broke into wider public consciousness, such as Pulse and The Grudge, and a significant portion of the doc is dedicated to Teruyoshi Ishii’s Psychic Vision: Jaganrei, a defining moment in Japanese horror history that is surely overdue a deluxe release from a boutique label.

The interviewees bring unique insights into Japanese history, culture and traditions that shaped the J-horror landscape, from traditional Japanese folklore like the yūrei and onryō, to the economic boom and subsequent collapse at the turn of the millennium, to spiritual differences between Japanese and American horror. An especially interesting aspect of the documentary comes from Ino’o and her thoughts on the role of gender in Japanese horror. By and large, behind the scenes, J-horror is not a hugely gender-diverse genre, with Asato being the only female director working in the genre to really gain recognition (there are of course multiple women with important work within the broader scope of Japanese horror – Mika Ninagawa, Kei Fujiwara and Shimako Sato to name but a few – but as The J-Horror Virus has taught us, J-horror and Japanese horror are two different beasts). Despite most famous J-horror movies revolving around women in some way – either as protagonist or croaking antagonist – their thoughts on the genre are often ignored in favour of those of their male contemporaries. It is hugely appreciated that Sharp and Appleton gave these women – who make the genre what it is – their platform and spotlight to speak.

Admittedly, judging a documentary on aesthetics is often difficult due to their objective nature, but The J-Horror Virus manages to imbue its entire runtime with a feeling of appropriate creepiness, complete with eerie, ambient soundtrack, effectively spooky transition visuals and the interviews themselves that look like they’re taking place in an abandoned warehouse. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, it might have been easy for this documentary – with the slow nature of its subject and soft-spoken interviewees – to slip into monotony, it’s this attention to detail (plus perfectly selected clips of the downright most terrifying moments in J-horror history) that makes The J-Horror Virus fully immersive, and proves Sharp and Appleton permeated the project with pure passion for bringing these stories to the big screen. 

Japan is a place that has long fascinated film fans, especially those from outside of the culture, but due to lack of translation or distribution, a good amount of Japanese horror – especially that from the V-cinema era - remains inaccessible and unknown to Western audiences. Aside from a dedicated group of fans working to preserve and translate these straight-to-video gems from the ‘90s and ‘00s, not a huge amount of information has been readily available to the Western world about the history and cultural impact of these films. Thanks to The J-Horror Virus, even the most dedicated of Japanese horror fans will come away from The J-Horror Virus with new additions to their watchlist and a new appreciation for a genre long misunderstood, and somehow more relevant than ever before. 

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