All in The Archives
“Kakurenbo (Hide & Seek)” is an animated short horror film from Japan. It is 30 minutes of a game of hide and seek with deadly consequences. Once seven children follow the clues in old street signs (O-to-ko-yo), they wind up at the gates of the city of the dead. They must wear fox masks to conceal their identities. Only then can they enter and compete against demons in a brutal game with no real winner.
Pulse is one of the better known J-Horror films from the late 90s/early 00’s. It is a technology/chain letter hybrid horror occupying an odd space between The Ring and Suicide Club. Essentially a metaphor for the increasing distance between people as the Internet gains prominence in the world, Pulse involves a strange website that invites its viewers to see a ghost. If you agree, bad things happen.
Horror giants George Romero and Dario Argento collaborated on a modern day adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. Romero totally reset his take on “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” in the present, while Argento’s “The Black Cat” uses a little dream logic and unusual settings to aim for something more timeless.
Donkey Punch is like a grotesque Agatha Christie mystery. You don’t know who will get popped off next, and you don’t know how it will go down. Donkey Punch even features one disturbing and unbelievable kill I’ve never seen in decades of consuming slashers like air. It’s And Then There Were None on steroids, only set in the same universe as Dead Calm.
The Hills Have Eyes is writer/director Wes Craven’s second horror film, preceded by The Last House on the Left. Again, he establishes an outsider versus insider mentality, expanding his focus from two young women going to a rock concert to an entire extended family traveling cross country to California. The approach to the stories is the same: after a horrific act of violence, the survivors attempt to fight back against their unhinged assailants in an unforgiving environment.
