Week Ten, Fiction of Ideas

The Horror of Jhorror

  After I read some comics from Junji ito, I noticed some difference that between western and Japanese Horror. Personally I get more scared by watching Japanese horror movies and reading comics. It gives me more imagination and mental presser of the ghost or monster. In J horror they make the main characters feel isolated that when they are facing the weird thing, there are nobody that can help him, there is no where that he can run. In American horror stories, there are always hope. The victims sometime can find a chance to defense and stay alive from this whole horrible experience with the horrible monster. There is one of the stories really impressed me which is called "layers of horror". In the story the girl is cursed because of her father found something that has been buried in some remains. The grave has been built in layers as a human shape and the same thing happened to the girl as well. Later on they found out that. One thing that the mom and the sister talked about was interesting. They have different opinions on how to deal with this. The sister think they should put the thing back to the remains but the mom think it is just superstition, it wouldn't help and nobody can help them. That is the feeling I feel that most Jhorror has which that they can't get any help or find any hope. An interesting thing about Jhorror that a lot of them actually happens in the city but not like some hunted house here that is in the middle of nowhere. They have a lot of urban legend that there are different sprites lives in the corners of the city. In Japanese legends there are a lot of gods that manage everything so at the main time there are also evil exist which as yokai. They are mostly sprites, some of them live by eating the bad emotions from human beings which is why when people get more scared they will get stronger.
  For me I feel that evil spirits and ghosts are more scary than real monster that you can physically touch and fight with. The mental effect they have can destroy you confident, makes you lose your power. You would just feel powerless when you are facing them. The fear of unknown is the kind of fear that I mostly scared of which is exactly the fear that spirits and ghosts gives me.