Get Your Reps In: This Week’s Theme Is East Asian Horror, a Massively Influential Subgenre

There is so much more than just ghost girls with long black hair creepy crawling toward the camera.

By Mia Vicino

While local rep theaters are out of commission, we'll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. For the month of October, we highlight all the best horror for your Halloween movie marathons. This week's theme is East Asian horror, a massively influential subgenre that offers so much more than just ghost girls with long black hair creepy crawling toward the camera.
House (1977)

A seminal staple of Japanese horror, this psychedelic ghost story centers on a girl who travels to her aunt's rural home with six friends. One by one, the girls are picked off by the haunted house, be it via a killer grandfather clock, a ravenous piano, or even a portrait of a cat that spurts enough blood to flood a room. Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, HBO Max, iTunes, Vudu.


A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)

After returning home from a mental institution, a teenage girl discovers her house is haunted by the ghost of her late mother. But all is not what it seems; a series of mind-bending and disturbing twists propelled this psychological puzzle to become the highest-grossing Korean horror film of all time. Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, Kanopy, Shudder.


Ringu (1998)

In this blueprint that inspired all those J-horror American remakes of the early 2000s, a reporter must quickly solve the mystery of a cursed videotape that kills the viewer within seven days. What makes Ringu stand out from the crowd is that it manages to be outrageously terrifying with minimal gore and violence. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Kanopy, Shudder, Sling TV, YouTube.

Audition (1999)

Infamous as one of the most disturbing films in cinema history, this gruesome nightmare from Takashi Miike follows a widowed film producer who sets up bogus auditions to find a new wife. When he selects the enigmatic Asami, he soon gets what's coming to him: Kidnapping, torture and dismemberment ensues. Amazon Prime, Shudder, Sling TV, Tubi, Vudu.


Marebito (2004)

A cameraman obsessed with the phenomenon of fear ventures into Tokyo's labyrinthine subway tunnels, where he finds an underground world and rescues a mysterious woman chained to a cave wall. Directed by The Grudge's Takashi Shimizu, this Lovecraftian vampire story is steeped in a brooding atmosphere and chilling ambiguity. Kanopy, Vudu.

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