10 Fantastic Asian Horror Films You Must See Before You Die
Rings around the rest.
Horror is among Asia's finest exports, right up there with Nintendo, Godzilla, Samsung smartphones and some of the best cuisine we've ever eaten.
The genre's heyday in the Far East may be a decade behind us, but the golden years produced enough terrifying fright fests to give us nightmares for a lifetime.
While horror cinema in the Western world is blighted by an endless stream of remakes sequels, remakes and reboots, Asia has shunned chainsaws, hockey masks and haunted houses in favour of more creative chills.
And when we say creative, we really mean downright bizarre, yet still more than capable of evoking primal terror, particularly in Western viewers who may be unfamiliar with the cultural differences on display.
Korean horror, in particular, has emerged as a hotbed of creativity thanks to the work of directors like Chan-wook Park, who almost singlehandedly established the revenge-themed psychological thriller as its own sub-genre.
So if the idea of dumb, horny teens being slaughter by a masked killer and few cheap jump-scares no longer does it for you, there are places you can turn, and they're far removed from Hollywood.
10. The Eye (2002)
When a blind woman regained her sight via a miraculous operation, the audience will have been forgiven for thinking they were in for an uplifting, feel-good story better suited to daytime TV, but The Eye is anything but.
It turns out that retina transplants come with some horrific, ghostly side effects that have Angelica Lee's protagonist screaming out for a return to the sweet, black abyss.
The Eye is intentionally slow-paced, biding its time to build a sense of foreboding before paying out in eerie imagery and a trouser-soilingly terrifying lift scene that will have you taking the stairs for the rest of your life.
A Hollywood remake of the Singaporean original was released in 2008, but ended up being vastly inferior, mostly because it had Jessica Alba in it.