J-HORROR - como entender a novíssima escola oriental de cinema

Abstract

The debug of Horror in the movies, its main ramifications and classifications. Among these, the Novíssima Escola Oriental de Cinema (J-Horror, according to popular branding) is decoupled in order to identify the Eastern cultural elements that often bring the horror’s psichological – and phisical – effects in film audiences; and having, as a collateral or secondary objective, the understanding that not only in Japan J-Horror films are made. For this particular research, the most relevant sequences of scenes in eight examples of J-Horror films, from different Eastern countries (Japan, Hong Kong / Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, Laos, China, South Korea), are decouped to its essencial elements, showing that the main plot (the interaction between the spiritual world and the physical one), the array of colors of the films (tends to cold tones of blue and green), and objects like hair (generally black and long), children (and/or ragged people with hospital clothes), water (in small or big amounts), elevators, telephones and photographs (either digital and analogical) are the scary elements more often present in J-Horror films – as a relevant part of the plot or not. Theoretical support provided by Laura Cánepa in attention to the [Horror] genre, and David Bordwell’s and Jean Claude Bernardet’s stylistic and structural apports orient the research and, subconsciously, the choice of the studied films.