5 Underappreciated Japanese Slasher Movies
When the idea of Japanese horror cinema is brought up, most people think of a scary girl with long black hair covering her face, slow creeping curses that eventually consume the unlucky protagonist, or yokai running rampant. Haunted homes, families in peril, and tense buildups of scares are what the genre is famous for.
However, there is so much more to Japanese horror cinema than pale, ghostly girls. There are incredible offerings from Japan in the slasher genre as well. Some retain supernatural elements, some are dark psychological thrillers, while still others subvert the slasher genre completely.
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It's almost impossible to talk about Japanese horror cinema without mentioning Takashi Miike. This 2012 slasher is an adaptation of a novel by Yusuke Kishi and follows Seiji Hasumi, a high school teacher who decides that the rampant bullying and violence in his school need to be curbed in any way possible. The truth about Hasumi is that he is a dangerous and intelligent sociopath who has been murdering people for fun, including his parents, since he was a child.
The film becomes a tangled web of blackmail, murder, and manipulation as Hasumi pits students and teachers against each other. He covers up his murders as suicides, sows seeds of gossip and rumors, and eventually graduates to a full-blown massacre. The film wasn't well received upon release, hence it did not gain much traction outside of Japan. However, it's worth watching for the stylish visuals and performance of the lead.
2010 slasher Black Rat, directed by Kenta Fukasaku, sees a group of students receive a mysterious message to meet in classroom 3B at midnight. The six students convene to find themselves confronted by a girl
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