THE J-HORROR VIRUS

The story of how a single Japanese videotape changed the course of global horror history.

THE J-HORROR VIRUS charts the origins, evolution and diffusion across the world of a distinctive brand of made-in-Japan supernatural chillers featuring vengeful ghosts manifesting themselves through contemporary technology against a backdrop of urban alienation and social decay. From its origins in Teruyoshi Ishii’s fake documentary PSYCHIC VISION: JAGANREI (1988) and Norio Tsuruta’s seminal SCARY TRUE STORIES (1991/92) straight-to-video series, through such key titles as Hideo Nakata’s RING (1998), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s PULSE (2001) and Takashi Shimizu’s JU-ON: THE GRUDGE (2002), critics and the filmmakers reflect on how the bleak dystopic visions and unsettling atmospheres that made these works so unique infiltrated their way across the world.