Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto • 1989 • Japan
Starring Tomorowo Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Nobu Kanaoka

An ordinary Japanese salaryman undergoes a shocking metamorphosis in Shinya Tsukamoto’s legendary fusion of body horror and cyberpunk expressionism. A strange man known only as the “metal fetishist”...

Directed by Hideo Nakata • 1998 • Japan
Starring Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Miki Nakatani

The film that launched the craze for J-horror in the West, director Hideo Nakata’s international sensation melded traditional Japanese folklore with contemporary anxieties about the spread of techn...

Directed by Takashi Shimizu • 2002 • Japan
Starring Megumi Okina, Misaki Ito, Takashi Matsuyama

A cursed house—where years earlier a woman, her son, and cat were murdered—has some seriously spooky surprises in store for all who pass through its door. When social worker Rika (Megumi Okina) is sen...

Directed by Takashi Shimizu • 2003 • Japan
Starring Noriko Sakai, Shingo Katsurayama, Chiharu Niiyama

Takashi Shimizu’s sequel to his international hit delivers more of the indelibly creepy atmosphere and tension-enhancing nonlinear style that made the original a J-horror sensation. Here, the cu...

Directed by Takashi Miike • 1999 • Japan
Starring Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Miyuki Matsuda

In one of the most notorious horror films ever made, recent widower Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi) sets out to find a new wife by staging an “audition.” Interviewing a series of women, Shigeharu becomes encha...

Directed by Takashi Miike • 2001 • Japan
Starring Tadanobu Asano, Nao Omori, Shinya Tsukamoto

Visceral, bloody, and often hilarious, Takashi Miike’s gonzo gore opera (an adaptation of the manga by Hideo Yamamoto) is one of the most influential and notorious genre films of the twenty-first centur...

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • 2001 • Japan
Kumiko Aso, Haruhiko Kato, Koyuki

In Tokyo, a group of young people begin to experience strange phenomena involving missing coworkers and friends, technological breakdown, and a mysterious website that asks them, “Do you want to meet a ghost?” After th...

Directed by Hideo Nakata • 2002 • Japan
Starring Hitomi Kuroki, Rio Kanno, Asami Mizukawa

After terrifying audiences worldwide with the J-Horror classic RING and its sequel, director Hideo Nakata returned to the genre for this atmospheric tale of the supernatural. Based on a short story by RING ...

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • 2016 • Japan
Starring Hidetoshi Nishijima, Yuko Takeuchi, Masahiro Higashide

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who made his international reputation with the horror masterpieces CURE and PULSE, gets back to his roots by putting the thumbscrews to the audience in this insidiously ...

Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • 1977 • Japan
Starring Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Oba

How to describe Nobuhiko Obayashi’s indescribable 1977 movie HOUSE (HAUSU)? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of “Scooby-Doo” as directed by Mario Bava? Any...

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • 1997 • Japan

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s arresting international breakthrough established him as one of the leaders of an emerging new wave of Japanese horror while pushing the genre into uncharted realms of philosophical and existential exploration. A string of shocking, s...

Directed by Kaneto Shindo • 1964 • Japan

Deep within the wind-swept marshes of war-torn medieval Japan, an impoverished mother and her daughter-in-law eke out a lonely, desperate existence. Forced to murder lost samurai and sell their belongings for grain, they dump the corpses down a deep, dark...

Directed by Kaneto Shindo • 1968 • Japan
Starring Kichiemon Nakamura, Nobuko Otowa, Kei Sato

In this poetic and atmospheric horror fable, set in a village in war-torn medieval Japan, a malevolent spirit has been ripping out the throats of itinerant samurai. When a military hero is sent to dispat...