20 Awesome J-Horror Movies Every Horror Fan Should See
18. Kwaidan
Plot: This is an anthology of four Japanese supernatural folktales. They concern: A samurai who suffers terrible consequences after mistreating his loving wife, a woodcutter who encounters a spirit in the snow, a blind Buddhist monk who begins performing a song about a great sea battle to the ghosts of the people who died in it and a samurai who drinks a man's reflection in a cup of tea.
Kwaidan, directed by Masaki Kobayashi, is a flawed classic. It's slow, it's difficult to digest and the final segment is a lot weaker, but at the same time there's a huge amount to admire about it and Kwaidan is an undeniably mesmerising experience.
Roger Ebert once described Kwaidan as one of the most beautiful films he'd seen and it's not all that hard to see why. On a visual level, Kwaidan is truly stunning and its set design and use of colour is something to behold.
Kwaidan is a film without scares, but the individual stories are still interesting and emotionally fulfilling experiences and the first segment is particularly great, As a tribute to Japanese folklore, it's a bulls-eye.