Remaking Asian Films for an American Audience

Look closely. Chances are, the horror film you’re watching is a remake, taken script and all, from an sian production. A new trend is upon us: Hollywood has taken on

a slew of Asian films, turning them into U.S. blockbusters and earning beaucoup bucks. The great perk for Hollywood: Hardly any Americans know of the original Asian counterparts and believe they’re watching an original film.

The American movie studios have caught on to what true horror fans have known for ages: that Asian horror films are among the most disturbing and astonishingly horrific films ever made. Instant classics like The Ring, Ju-On and The Eye have all been remade into cookie-cutter versions of the originals with huge financial payoffs -- and no end in sight.

These Asian films tend to take a different approach to horror than American movies do. In the United States, we’d rather see characters get killed immediately rather than find out their backstories. Asian films build the suspense, where it can feel like the only thing happening is the paint drying -- until it’s time to unleash hell, and the story is flipped entirely upside down with its guts on the floor. As much as Asian films are imitated to produce the Hollywood versions, original elements are often discarded from the remake to make a much more U.S.-friendly adaptation; the best examples are Takashi Miike’s Audition or Dead or Alive.

“I’ve seen a lot of original Japanese films, and I think that it’s some of the most inventive and most interesting filmmaking,” said Sarah Michelle Gellar in an interview, who has been in the U.S version of Ju-On: The Grudge.

Where American horror focuses on themes like zombies and psychos, Asian films stick with culture and history by using spirits and ghosts to scare viewers, relying on slow, deliberate atmosphere rather than Hollywood flash. But why not release these Asian hits over here? Because people are more afraid of subtitles than they are of what’s lurking in a dark alley.

Roy Lee: You should know the name because he’s the guy who’s introducing these new hits to the American public as well as distributing the originals on DVD. The executive producer of The Ring, The Ring 2 and countless upcoming remakes, Lee is one of the hottest commodities in Hollywood right now with over 20 (!) projects currently in development with U.S. studios. Lee, who’s Korean American, started out with partner Ed Kashiba and founded the Web-based script coverage service ScriptShark.com, which they sold to IFILM Corp. the following year.

Together with Doug Davison, they founded the company Vertigo Entertainment -- an intermediary that sells the remake rights for Asian films, on behalf of the rights-holders, to American studios. After the iFilm sale, Lee secured the rights to Ringu and followed the path to success by brokering deals for The Ring 2, Dark Water, The Grudge and The Eye as well as thrillers like Addicted (originally South Korea’s Jungdok) and Chaos (Japan’s Kaosu).

But everything is a version of something, right? George Lucas based the story of Star Wars on Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress. And while Kurosawa’s Yojimbo was a substantial (and uncredited) influence on many spaghetti westerns, specifically A Fistful Of Dollars, the same can be said of Yojimbo being an uncredited version of Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel Red Harvest, which Hammett himself stole from the short story “The Cleansing of Poisonville,” which appeared in pulp magazine Black Mask in 1927. And Kevin Bacon can be linked somehow, so figure it out and let us know.

It’s all fair game, because at the end of the day it’s all about money. Or at least in Hollywood’s case, simply having the patience to wait for Asia’s next export.

Here are some new Asian Horror films worth paying attention to:

• Chan Wook-Park, the creator behind Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and the upcoming Lady Vengeance, will be directing the vampire story Evil Live, according to Daily Variety. In an interview, Park said, “It’s more about the question of the existence of God and Evil” than a regular vampire movie. “I’m not so interested in the vampire genre per se,” he added, “more in the religious theme.” Park will also be helming a cyborg pic entitled Even If You’re a Cyborg, It’s No Problem, which focuses on two inmates—a man, and a woman who thinks she’s a cyborg.

• Marebito: A fear-obsessed freelance cameraman (Shinya Tsukamoto) investigates an urban legend involving mysterious spirits that haunt the subways of Tokyo. Director Takashi Shimizu shot the film in eight days between the productions of Ju-on: The Grudge and its remake, The Grudge.

• The Host, directed by Memories of Murder’s Bong Joon-ho, centers around a mutant that emerges from Seoul’s Han River and focuses its attention on attacking people. According to the trades, the low budget South Korean production company, Chungeorahm, hired three of the world’s top FX companies to boost its bid to break onto the world film scene.

Written by: Ricky Chance