Shocktoberfest 2019 Update #6

Dream Home

Shocktoberfest 2019 Update #6

So far, there has been a paucity of films from the Asiatic Region in this year's Shocktoberfest. This week's selections attempted to correct that omission. While none of this week's movies are considered Asian Extreme Horror, some of them are pretty close. Caveat emptor!

42) Dream Home (2010) Based on a true story, this Hong Kong film focuses on  the pressures of finding a suitable home after the 1997 handover. Or is it about the pressures of being a woman in a traditionally patriarchal culture? Or maybe it is about the pressures of preserving your family when the government turns a blind eye towards the exploitation of its citizens for profit?  With an impressive body count of 12, four breasts and about 80 gallons of blood, this Dream Home is violent, bloody, gory and so watchable. 

43) Audition (2000) This movie was my introduction to Japanese auteur Takashi Miike, another name that all horror movie lovers should know. Focusing on the delicate, piano wire thin tendrils of new relationships, Audition asks the difficult questions and unflinchingly dissects the answers:

Audition

For further reading, my original post on Miike, and Audition is here.

Cold Fish

44) Cold Fish (2010) Do you remember Suicide Club (2000)? The Japanese movie that started with a group of smiling school girls joining hands and leaping in front of an oncoming subway train? Director Sion Sono has continued to explore strange and beautiful and brutal territories. Cold Fish no different from its predecessors as we watch a family implode and then explode. The second movie of the week based on a true story.

The Wailing

45) The Wailing (2016) I should have put this South Korean film on my Best of list. Endlessly fascinating, multi-layered story about a small village that becomes a battle ground between good and evil, The Wailing focuses on individual characters to ask big questions about faith. For fans that consider the best movies to be beguiling puzzles, watching and re-watching this film always pays off. It does not hurt that rural South Korea is beautifully photographed. In a week of movies that could feature the tag line "A Blood Soaked Orgy of Terror!" The Wailing's tempered pacing and slowly unfolding story was a reprieve of sorts. 

46) Ju-on: The Grudge (2002) I remember how frightening I found this movie when I originally saw it! This movie  to consists of several vignettes where people are drawn to the haunted house to help in some fashion, only to be haunted to death by the angry spirits that habit it. 

47) Macabre (2009) ...and we're back. This 2009, Indonesian film was the  break out for The Mo Brothers and is easily the most grisly movie of the week. Truly a bat-shit crazy, bloody journey of "WTF did I just see?" The plot is simple, a group of young people are tricked into giving a stranded woman a ride home to a remote house in the country. Chaos ensues, with an honest to God chainsaw fight climax. 

Check out what else I have watched for Shocktoberfest 2019.