J-Horror

In the late 1990s Japanese cinema produced a new kind of horror that was slow, quiet and deeply unsettling. Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998) made a cursed videotape and a pale, long-haired ghost famous around the world, and Hollywood soon began remaking such films. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure and Pulse found dread in ordinary rooms, empty streets and the new internet. Takashi Miike pushed the genre toward shock and dark humour in Audition. These films often rest on old Japanese ghost tales, but their fear is modern: loneliness, family tension and the machines that were supposed to connect people.

Where

Japan, mostly Tokyo

When

c.1996 to 2008, peaking around 1998 to 2005

Key figures

Hideo Nakata, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Takashi Miike, Shinya Tsukamoto

Landmark films

Cure (1997), Ringu (1998), Audition (1999), Pulse (2001), Dark Water (2002)

Legacy

Spread the vengeful ghost and the haunted gadget worldwide and inspired many Hollywood remakes

What to look for

• Slow, quiet scenes where dread builds before anything appears
• Vengeful female ghosts rooted in old Japanese folklore
• Phones, videotapes and the internet as doors for the dead