(HORROR) The Doll Master - 2004 **

This freaked me out far more than I think was intended purely because I am terrified of dolls. The idea of painted dolls moving makes me feel quite sick, so you can imagine how it made the characters in the film, who were subjected to constant scenes full of moving dolls with bloodshot eyes and incredibly straight hair. A typical Japanese horror about ancient curse/revenge. Weird.

(HORROR) Whispering Corridors: Voice - 2005 **

I think I've seen one of the Whispering Corridor movies and wasn't hugely impressed with that. I also appear to be watching them in the wrong order which isn't helping. Maybe it's because I've seen a lot of these Japanese horror films that I'm becoming less and less impressed with the quality of them. The story for this was a bit ridiculous. A girl in the first scene dies after having her throat cut by a sheet of music.. something symbolic there I imagine. We then learn that the girl is dead but knows that she is and only her best friend can hear her when she sings because she has such a beautiful voice (although she really doesn't. It's a bit like a cat trapped in a washing machine.) She wanders around the school in an ethereal state while the rest of her classmates don't seem to care a bit that she's dead. It's very odd. I can't say I enjoyed it, and it dragged a heck of a lot.

(HORROR) Noriko's Dinner Table - 2005 **

I'm not quite sure why this is called a sequel to 'Suicide Club' because if anything it is a prequel to the events leading up to the mass suicide under the train at the beginning of the latter. It's extremely confusing, but what I got from it was that a young girl named Noriko who doesn't feel like she belongs in her family and her current life, runs away to Tokyo to meet the founder of a teenage chat room whom she has been speaking to. It turns out that every person who committed suicide under the train was also a member. Sort of a place for lost souls to go who 'don't fit in'. However, the girl she meets turns out to be a very peculiar being who, along with her family delights in playing strange mind games with Noriko and telling her lies about how she was brought up. She succeeds in 'brainwashing' Noriko into believing that she has no family and that she lives there with her.
It's all very odd, a bit more in the vein of 'Strange Circus' than 'Suicide Club' but also seems to deal more with Tokyo culture and how teenage girls get sucked into an artificial world of celebrity.

(HORROR) The Suicide Club - 2001 ***

I have wanted to watch this for years and finally got the chance to see this and the sequel this weekend. Absolutely bizarre is all I can say. Japan really has surreal and disturbing horror down to a T. Some parts of the film really stick in your head for hours afterwards, such as the very first scene where 54 female students jump in front of a train set to strange Scottish music. Very weird. From then on the whole film tries to work out why suicides are happening all around Tokyo and what could lead such a large group of girls to commit suicide in happy unison. There isn't really an answer to this film, and it's more about what goes on beneath the surface than the exterior.
I actually quite enjoyed it. (Sick or what?)

(HORROR) Tetsuo: The Iron Man - 1989 1/2

The people who rated this movie as anything other than hideous must be from another planet. A hideously poor escuse of a movie from the Tartan Asian Gang. Centring around a metal fetishist who enjoys sticking bits of metal inside his various body parts, the film follows the man with a jerky camera as he runs around and makes funny noises whilst inserting more metal in more places. It's like an acid trip nightmare. Something you might dream about if you were in the middle of a serious bout of flu. Sort of delusional horror. Horrible. Something I never want to see again.

The Red Shoes - 2005 ****

This was a very confusing Tartan Asia film. (I'm back on my TAE buzz). It was good, and my god it was creepy, terrifying in fact, but there was a lot of it that I didn't understand which therefore would probably render a re-watch sometime.

The red shoes are in fact pink, although there is a specific reason why the title says 'Red' but I haven't been able to find it out.

The shoes are cursed (as usual there is a long story that goes into why), and claim anyone who dares to pick them up and try them on. This usually means a painful death or in other cases, the person having their legs cut off. The 'victims' also become sort of manic and psychotic around others when faced with losing the shoes and usually there is also a girl with long black hair down her face near the scene of the crime. I think it's quite a good storyline, and the Asians are so talented at weaving bizarre plots around bizarre objects that they do it like no other, (added to which, the black haired girl is now their sort of 'gimmick' which is darn effective no matter how many times it's seen). However there was a lot that I missed in this film despite paying attention, and I can only guess that that is because I will need to see it again (which is not a bad thing!).