“Your favorite horror from the 1990’s” is the theme for Day 25 of our 30-Day Horror Challenge.
Now I have to remember what horror movies were made in the 1990’s. Why is it that I always seem to forget details in that ten-year gap between the 1980’s and the 21st Century? The 90’s always slips through my memory… oh wait, I became a legal adult at the beginning of the 1990’s. That’s why I can never remember details – I drank just so much alcohol! I went to concerts and drank like a fish and did stupid shit that I hope has been forgotten by the witnesses because man, if THAT was the public image legacy that sticks with me the rest of my life? I need to close my social media accounts, change my name and move to California.
Yeah if your memories of Kev are from the 1990’s I have to assure you that I got better. Also, you might have an unexplained fatal accident because I can’t leave any witnesses alive.
Sorry, mom.
Anyway, while I was prattling on about things that are simultaneously self-deprecating and self-serving, I Googled up some 90’s horror movies.
My first thoughts are “Underwhelming.” I think more than half of the list is just sequels of 80’s movies and other, earlier 90’s movies. Hollywood really went all-in on the regurgitation strategy around the 90’s, didn’t it?
On a deeper dive, I’m reminded that this is around the time that the new trend in Japanese horror burst onto the scene. This was such the rage in the 90’s, everywhere you looked, there was a little Japanese girl in a dirty white shift with her head tilted forward and long black hair obscuring her (presumably) ghosty face. It was the era of Japanese-Ghost-Girl-Hair-In-Face.
Snark aside, Japan has a fantastic pedigree of ghost stories in movies, the earliest example, “Ghost Mirror,” precedes “Nosferatu” by fourteen years. There was a boom of them in the mid-50’s and 60’s, and then a new boom happened in the 1990’s, through the early 2000’s, around the time the American horror boom of the 1980’s was cooling down a bit, and relying on recycling.
Of these, I think my favorite was “Ju-On: The Grudge.” Once I mastered that creaky throat noise thing I used to love sneaking up on my partner in dark rooms and whipping that one out. She hated it! It was glorious!
Pretty typical J-Horror for the era… wait, why do we always boil down Japanese and Korean entertainment ventures as “J” this and “K” that? Italian horror was never called “I-Horror” and American music was never called “A-Pop.” It’s only Japanese and Korean. I’m not sure the root of it… and I want to make the conscious decision right now to stop doing that personally, but I don’t want to be mistaken for some uber-woke cancel-culturey virtue-signal assholes.
I’ll do a compromise. “J-Horror” is now “Japanese Horror” but “K-Pop” is still “K-Pop” because K-Pop is gross and I don’t want to legitimize it any further than necessary. No disrespect to my Korean friends, but cartoon video game boy-band bullshit is the ick.
Other good entries from the Land of the Rising Sun, around this time, include “Ringu”/”The Ring,” “Audition,” “Dark Water,” and “Cure.”
…although now that I’m Googling I discovered “Dark Water” is from 2002, as is “Ju-On: The Grudge.” You know, the one that I claimed to be my favorite 1990’s horror movie.
Shit.
Alright let’s go with “Ringu” then. Who cares, this whole month is going by too quickly anyway. There’s not even pumpkin spice everything commercials happening anymore. Everything sucks.