Format: Blu-Ray from North Chicago Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.
National cinemas have their horror styles, which reflect a number of things about the culture from whence they come. You can’t learn everything about a culture from their horror movies, but you can learn something. Japanese horror is often about the slow burn and frequently about vengeful ghosts and unquiet spirits of one kind or another. That’s definitely the case with Kaneto Shindô’s Kuroneko (Black Cat if you want the English or Yabu no naka no kuroneko for its original name—this roughly translates to “a black cat in the bushes”).
What makes this film fun is that we’re not just going to have those staples of J-horror to enjoy, although we will get lots of angry, murderous ghost activity and slowly building tension. No, with Kuroneko we’re also going to get that other staple of Japanese cinema, at least of this era: samurai. Yes, this is a samurai folk horror tale, and that is a wonderful thing to behold.
