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context: movies > genres
Horror
Japan (among other SE Asian countries) has produced a bunch of great horror films in recent years. We could just assume that some great talents happen to have come along, but I'm inclined to suggest that there may be a couple of reasons why they've been so good at it.
There's a great history of horror in Japanese storytelling and art - ghosts all over the place, and an extraordinary variety of supernatural creatures. This gives a rich toolbox to choose from. Obviously we in the West have our own toolbox, or toolboxes since 'the West' is hardly one culture, and I am not competent to judge whether theirs has more or better tools in it, but it has different tools, and I suspect that this means that images and ideas that perhaps seem familiar - maybe even hackneyed - to a Japanese viewer strike a Western viewer as fresh and powerful, and scary. I thought of this when watching The Grudge - a scene with something crawling down the stairs towards the end reminded me of a Hokusai print I already had on this site. Maybe to Japanese audiences their reaction is "Okay, another one of those," whereas it might be "what the fuck is THAT?" to others.
A couple of horror films: