Comedy splatter legend (and the mastermind behind such Criterion classics as Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead and Mutant Girl Squad) Noboru Iguchi’s IDOL NEVER DiES played as the main feature of the inaugural Tokyo Horror Film Festival, which took place on July 1 in Tokyo’s Nakano ward. The festival also featured an exclusive Q&A with director Iguchi himself.

Despite what a particularly vocal subset of haters might crow online, horror has always explored the well-solidified connection between familial trauma and the supernatural. Countless horrors spanning all eras, from Don’t Look Now to Relic, have propounded the idea that far scarier than any ghost, ghoul or demon are the scars your family can leave on you - in the case of Nate Ki’s Back Home, both literally and physically.

One of the standout Taiwanese features played at this year’s New York Asian Film Festival was Ying-Ting Tseng’s The Abandoned, a bleak police procedural thriller that shone an uncomfortable spotlight on the harrowing realities faced by a country’s most vulnerable occupants.

Star of last year’s NYAFF hit Shin Ultraman, actor and filmmaker Takumi Saitoh returned to the fest this year with his second directorial feature Home Sweet Home – a slick and sinister thriller that subverts the image of the haunted house from dusty old mansion to something far more enviable.

Since premiering at last year’s FrightFest, Keishi Kondo’s New Religion has been at the top of every Japanese horror fan’s watchlist. In his directorial debut, Kondo has created less of a straightforward horror movie and more a living, breathing thought experiment, fluttering in the midst of moral philosophy and asking an enraptured audience to reckon with the timeless, unanswerable question: what makes a human? Spine? Collarbone? Ribs? Hair? History?

There are certain sounds that encapsulate life in Japan. The gentle 'beep boop' of the pedestrian crossing signal. The lighthearted arrival jingles that signal the approach of your commuter train.