Thursday, March 15

True Asian Horror

Last night, I watched the second episode of the True Asian Horror specials on Discovery Channel. I think it's an offshoot of the series True Horror hosted by Anthony Stewart Head since Giles is also narrating this show. TAS focuses mainly on the recent wave of Asian horror films that are taking cinemas all over the world by storm. The first episode took up mainly Japanese films like Ringu, Ju On and Audition, with a smatter of Korean films like Phone and Tale of Two Sisters.
This week's episode took up the films from Southeast Asia, namely the creepy The Eye, Shutter and this Indonesian film about a cursed/possessed doll (forgot the name).

Lots of creepy footage and scary shit, but the most chilling thing that I took away from the show was the realization that while we, the Philippines, have a great wealth of scary myths, legends, beliefs and other creepy old wives' tales, we still haven't been able to produce a world-class creepy horror film like our nearby neighbors in Hong Kong, Bangkok or Indonesia. Perhaps the problem is with the current crop of directors and writers (and to an extent, actors)- apparently none of them have that vision or idea or concept of scaring people aside from piling on prosthetics, cheap CG and tired shock tactics.

A really creepy and scary horror film need not slather on the gore, nor does it require a big budget or anything we don't already have, as seen by how other Asian directors have gone about stuff. I won't venture to say that I know what needs to be done to make a good horror film- it's about the farthest thing from my stuff- but I do enjoy good horror flicks every now and then, and it just frustrates me that we don't have our own Ringu or Eye or Shutter. Just too bad. Let's see some good scares, people. Do we have what it takes or don't we?

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