Arrow Video

Vengeful ghosts returning from beyond the grave, young women with supernatural abilities, investigative narratives, a terror of technology, and an ominous aura of urban alienation and isolation mark the wave of horror and mystery films that emerged in Japan at the turn of the millennium, collectively labelled as J-Horror. Remastered from the best available elements and packed with a host of contemporary and archival extras, J-Horror Rising presents seven of the genres most distinctive titles.

In the ghostly pastoral horror of Shikoku, a young woman returns after many years to her rural birthplace, only to find her best friend from childhood has died by drowning when just sixteen. The dead girls mother, the local Shintoist priest, has embarked on the regions famous pilgrimage - but why is she walking backwards? The aftermath of the devasting Kobe Earthquake of 1995 creates fissures in the already fractured mind of a high-school girl in Isola: Multiple Personality Girl, allowing an unwelcome intruder to set up home in her head and leaving a volunteer worker with psychic powers to determine which of her personas is the fake one. Shikoku also provides the mystical backdrop to Inugami, as a teacher from Tokyo finds himself drawn to a local papermaker, only to find himself the subject of some hostility from her extended family, who have long ties to the region and are rumoured to be the descendants of the guardians of ancient evil canine spirits.

Megumi Okina (Ju-On: The Grudge) plays the art designer for a horror-themed videogame in the innovative St. Johns Wort, who is forced to confront her childhood traumas when her colleagues ask her to gather visual materials from the creepy gothic mansion she has inherited from her estranged artist father. Carved: The Slit-Mouthe