Last Updated on August 26, 2025 by FANGORIA Staff
Following a hugely successful festival run, comprehensive horror documentary The J-Horror Virus is heading to Shudder, and we're pleased today to bring you an exclusive clip of one of
Directed by Sarah Appleton (The Found-Footage Phenomenon, Generation Terror) and Japanese cinema scholar Jasper Sharp (Behind the Pink Curtain) The J-Horror Virus is essential viewing for fans of one of horror's most terrifying and influential subgenres, and those looking to learn more:
The J-Horror Virus is a feature-length documentary charting the origins, evolution and diffusion across the world of a distinctive brand of made-in-Japan supernatural chillers that seeped into the global consciousness at the turn of the millennium, films featuring vengeful ghosts manifesting themselves through contemporary technology again a backdrop of urban alienation and social decay.
From its origins in Teruyoshi Ishii’s 1988 fake documentary Psychic Vision: Jaganrei (1988) and Norio Tsuruta’s seminal Scary True Stories (1991/92) straight-to-video series, through such key titles as Hideo Nakata’s Ring (1998), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse (2001) and Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), critics and the films’ makers reflect on how the bleak dystopic visions and unsettling atmospheres that made these works so unique infiltrated their way across the world.
Interviewees in The J-Horror Virus include Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure), Shin'ya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man), Takashi Shimizu (Ju-On), Masayuki Ochiai (Infection) and Mari Asato (Fatal Frame).
Rie Inoo and Takako Fuji, the actresses behind two icons of Japanese horror (Ring‘s Sadako Yamamura and Ju-On‘s Kayako Saeki respectively) will also feature.
The J-Horror Virus marks a recent resurgence in the oft-understood subgenere heralding from Japan in the late 90s and early 00s, along with Arrow's upcoming J-Horror Rising boxset, which Appleton and Sharp also helped to produce.
In our exclusive clip seen below, Kurosawa talks more about why J-horror is so scary, and why his 1997 magnum opus Cure is still so terrifying all these years later.
The J-Horror Virus hits Shudder on November 4.
