All posts tagged: Horror/Thriller

Swallow Backstory Main

Serving Up Horror: Nakanishi Mai shares the backstory of her sophomore short Swallow

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

In Swallow a striving actress is invited to a private, gourmet club only to discover her competition has prepared a horrifying banquet which devours her. Writer-director Nakanishi Mai follows up her haunting and atmospheric short Hana with a tale of the horrific depths to which human rivalries will go. Though she has worked for large companies such as Kadokawa, the bonafide genre fan has also dedicated time abroad collaborating with international genre stalwarts particularly in the realm of horror movies. Additionally, she founded the Scream Queen FilmFest Tokyo in 2013, a female-driven genre festival dedicated to sharing the unique and diverse visions that female artists bring to genre movies. With Hana, her directorial debut, she herself has become an exciting new voice in horror. And as with any sophomore effort, building upon the success of the first while continuing to creatively evolve took Nakanishi on a journey of opportunities and interesting turns. The seeds of Swallow first germinated in a short movie script which was scheduled to be shot in Korea that was cancelled. A Taiwanese producer told Nakanishi about a short …

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She Is Alone

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

High school student Sumiko jumped off a bridge on account of a certain incident, but failed in her attempt to kill herself. Having escaped the grips of death, she returns to school a few months later and soon begins terrorizing her classmate and childhood friend, Hideaki, upon learning he is secretly dating one of the teachers at their school. As Sumiko continues to antagonize and rebuff others, her actions steadily escalate…all for the sake of sustaining her own sense of peril. Director Nakagawa Natsuki graduated from the College of Arts, Rikkyo University and went to study filmmaking at the New Cinema Workshop. She then returned to Rikkyo enrolling in the Graduate Program in Body Expression and Cinematic Arts, Graduate School of Contemporary Psychology. Thereafter she entered the Graduate School of Film and New Media at Tokyo University of the Arts [TUA hereafter]. Though her school history suggests a constant academic pursuit of cinema, in truth the reason for her traversal through various programs was far more pragmatic. In an interview with SKIP City (where She Is …

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Killer Smile – Asakura Kayoko

Published by Ben Dimagmaliw

There is a perceptual problem in cinema that women are not suited for or interested in directing genre movies. Making such an assumption about Asakura Kayoko based on her model-esque stature and charming smile would be a disservice to the well-versed director and passionate fan of genre fare. At the 2014 Etheria Film Night where Asakura’s slow burn horror short HIDE and SEEK screened, feminist magazine ‘Bitch Media‘ reported a man expressing incredulity the evening’s chills and thrills were directed by Asakura and the other female filmmakers who walked on stage post-screening. Many male directors have become reliable brand names of genre movies, but there are few female directors with equal clout. The fact Asakura has had even fewer working female directors in her native Japan to venerate, especially in genres such as horror, makes the attention she has gained to date all the more remarkable. Raised in Yamaguchi Prefecture, her first encounter with cinema was in the form of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. when she was young child. After graduating high school she left Yamaguchi in …