meta: Horror
2021
'ID': Beastly Flesh March 25, 2021
Kei Fujiwara's sequel to 'Organ' ends up being more merely unpleasant than unsettling
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'Organ': Grotesquerie In Red March 16, 2021
Kei Fujiwara's symphony of sickness drowns you face-down in its excesses and lingers for a long time to come afterwards
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'The Strange Tale Of Panorama Island': He's So Unreal March 08, 2021
Suehiro Maruo's rendition of Edogawa Rampo's tale of wide-gauge decadence is both delirious and spot-on in its look and feel
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2020
'Versus': No Budget, All Ambition, Total Excess December 18, 2020
Twenty years later, Ryūhei Kitamura's pulp-horror gumbo of Lucio Fulci, Sam Raimi, George Miller, and everything in between remains a micro-budget, J-indie milestone
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'Vital': The Weight Of The Dead, And Of The Living November 10, 2020
Shinya Tsukamoto's dark drama about a medical student obsessed with the cadaver of a lost love becomes a moving meditation on how life and death inform each other
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'A Snake Of June': A Love (And Death) Triangle October 05, 2020
Shinya Tsukamoto's eros-and-thanatos story doesn't always work, but gets an A+ for dazzling effort anyway
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'Gemini': Of Self And Other August 28, 2020
Shinya Tsukamoto's seething, psychedelic adaptation of Edogawa Rampo's work remains one of his best films
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'Boogiepop': The Antibody Has A Voice August 03, 2020
Kouhei Kadono's knotty novels walk us backwards through the tangled stories surrounding a being that arises just long enough to right the world when it has fallen out of joint
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'The Adventures Of Denchu Kozo'/'Haze': Shorter Tsukamoto June 15, 2020
Two short films from Shinya Tsukamoto, now anthologized in the Arrow box set for the director, show off his cheeky-humored and bending-sinister sides
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2019
Junji Ito's 'No Longer Human': No Longer Dazai December 23, 2019
A manga horror icon takes on a classic of modern Japanese literature, and makes it his own in ways both fascinating and baleful
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Gō Tanabe's 'At The Mountains Of Madness': Horror's Human And Inhuman Faces December 16, 2019
Gō Tanabe's two-volume adaptation of Lovecraft's classic novella shouldn't be missed by fans of that writer, by lovers of comic adaptations, or by those who want to see manga at its best
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'Izo': Takashi Miike's Death (And Resurrection) Mantra November 11, 2019
Even longtime Takashi Miike fans were alienated by this mix of Miike's fetishes, 'Slaughterhouse-Five', and William S. Burroughs's space-age shamanism, but it deserves fresh eyes and open minds
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'Tomie': The Infinite Bad Penny August 12, 2019
Like all great horror, Junji Ito's now-classic series about an undying supernatural siren has something to say other than "boo!"
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Katsuhiro Ōtomo's 'Domu': A Child's Book Of Nightmares July 15, 2019
A shame that any of Katsuhiro Ōtomo's work should still be out of print, especially this precusor to 'AKIRA' that pits psionic warriors against each other in a high-rise apartment complex
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'Tetsuo II: Body Hammer': Metamorphoses May 20, 2019
Shinya Tsukamoto's follow-up (side-quel?) to his immortal debut is not quite as arresting or inspired, but it has many fascinating aspects all the same
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'Tetsuo: The Iron Man': Full Metal Mutation May 16, 2019
Thirty years later, Shinya Tsukamoto's frenzied masterwork of cyberpunk body horror still seethes like nothing else on film
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Bonten Taro's 'Badass Babe! Sex & Fury & Other Stories': The Girl With The Hanafuda Tattoo April 20, 2019
An eclectic collection of manga work from a tattoo artist, folk singer, and quasi-underworld figure until now only marginally known in the West
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'One Cut Of The Dead / Kamera o tomeru na!': This Camera Cannot Be Stopped, Ever! March 25, 2019
Not just a love letter to the cinematic underdogs who pull off amazing things with sheer sweat, it is one of those amazing things pulled off with sheer sweat
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'Dororo': Take (Back) Another Little Piece Of My Heart February 05, 2019
Osamu Tezuka's feudal-era supernatural epic manga gives us two antiheroes, mutilated in body and spirit alike, both seeking wholeness
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2018
Tsutomu Nihei's 'Abara': A Dead-Tech Sampler December 10, 2018
This one-shot story from the creator of 'BLAME!' and 'Knights Of Sidonia' serves as a useful entry point to the man's carbon-black universe of Giger-goth techno-body-horror
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