Japanese Horror VS American Horror
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East vs. West, America against Japan. Who has the scarier supernatural beings?
Before we can make a choice we should look at some comparisons, and I think the best place to start would be with a film that both American and Japanese studios have produced. The film I decided to examine is The Grudge (USA), or Ju-On: The Grudge (Japan).
Most supernatural beings in American films are one of two things: they’re either a ghost/spirit haunting a person, place or thing, or they’re a demon that is doing something in a very similar manner.
Supernatural beings in Japanese films are often very similar in nature, however Japanese creatures are much more terrifying and tend to offer more in the way of scares. This would explain why so many American companies like to copy Japanese titles like Ju-On: The Grudge and Ringu.
In both Grudge films, Japanese and American respectively, there are plenty of scary moments… but the American version just feels like a pale imitation to the original. As I mentioned earlier there is a reason that the American film just doesn’t achieve the same impact as the original, and I attribute this to a simple difference in culture. In an American horror film, a character dies in a traumatic experience and then continues to haunt the place of their demise until they can be set free to pass on to the afterlife.
In a Japanese film such as Ju-On: The Grudge, it’s a bit more complicated because it’s not just a haunting; it is a curse. The curse spreads like a disease — a character dies and curses the spot of their death. When a person stays around for a period of time, the curse sticks to them. The person is worn down and followed by the being who set the curse until they are also killed, spreading the curse to the place of their death.
The American Grudge film tries to capture this curse in its plot but then becomes convoluted and misses what made its predecessor so terrifying.
The other big difference is in the endings of Japanese and American horror movies. In the past, a majority of American horror films would have triumphant endings where the protagonists would win and the evil would be defeated, making sequels less likely.
Meanwhile, Japanese films would feature much more nihilistic endings, with their protagonists perishing while the evil persists onward and making the idea of a sequel much more reasonable.
In more recent years American films have started to adopt these sombre endings, which seemed to have started with films like The Grudge and The Ring (another American film which was based on a Japanese film called Ringu.) This has spilled out into other horror films, including The Conjuring, Cabin in the Woods, Hereditary, Midsommar and many more.
The American film industry certainly isn’t a stranger to horror movies having vague endings. For them, it seems like less of a storytelling device and a realistic ending and more of a way to market sequels.
When looking at these films, or ones like them, there is really only one question that needs to be asked: which do you prefer? At the end of the day, it all comes down to your opinion. If you want to form your own perception, I’d suggest simply sitting down and watching the movies for yourself. Everyone is different and every movie is different as well. The only person who can tell you what type of movies you enjoy is you.
Andy Tworek
Andy Tworek is a second-year professional writing student with a passion for all things scary, abnormal and strange. Despite being a skeptic of most conspiracies and paranormal phenomena, his curiosity of the unexplained always outweighs his disbelief. Andy is an avid fan of fictional horror content. While he may not be the most investigative when it comes to real-life conspiracies, you can always be sure he’ll find the truth behind your favourite fictional monsters.
