My project
My initial idea is to find a selection of recent US horror films, which have elements or a basis of urban/suburban myth. My three focus films will be The Ring, (Gore Verbinski, 2002), The Blair Witch Project, (Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick, 1999) and Sinister, (Scott Derrickson, 2012).My focus film will be The Ring, (Gore Verbinski, 2002) because of the Japanese spirits that inspired the main antagonist, Samara Morgan, such as Onryō, the story of Yotsuya Kaidan and the legend from Japanese folklore, Banchō Sarayashiki. In this project, I will be looking at the origins of the myths and how they inspired the films and also the different scare tactics used to create the horror in these films.
I am interested in this topic because some of these myths or 'folklore horror stories' have been one of the main inspirations for horror films made today. These myths are used as a basis or a link to the antagonists in the films that I am researching and these have a good viewing impact on the audiences that they are aimed at due to the cultural origins. Also the ways that they are presented in these films vary, resulting in different scare tactics being used, which is another area of my research. Some of these scare tactics used include gore, psychological fears and religious/cultural fears.
For my focus film, The Ring, I plan on using the scene where Rachel travels to the island to locate Samara's family and the scene where Rachel falls down the well, resulting in the ghost re-emerging from the waters then through the TV screen. I plan to use these because the character Samara Morgan uses fears deriving from cultural beliefs in Japan in order to scare spectators. She is inspired by Japanese spirits like Onryō who is known for his acts of revenge from his earlier suffering. The scene where Samara's relative is located details some of Samara's life before her death. Then the second scene I chose shows Samara's suffering when she was pushed down the well and this results in her revenge which includes her crawling from the well and out of the TV screen.
One of my secondary material items is from the website - www.yokai.com. From this website, I have details about the spirit, Onryō, that inspired Samara's character. Onryō is a spirit that died with a strong sense of jealousy or hatred, and often seeks revenge for its suffering during life.
