Just a discussion I had with my friends a while ago Obviously different cultures have different perceptions of the typical ghost My biggest question: Would the typical westerner be afraid of an Asian ghost? The typical Asian ghost has long black hair, really pale skin, and a long gown. Westerners: does this scare you? Or does it just seem like a really pale Asian girl?
Is it like the chick in the Japanese version of The Ring? Cos that hair was fricken scary. Or maybe it wasn't the Japanese version? I forget.
Haha i get what you're saying, but the rationale of the question is: Generally in western horror movies the mediums of horror tend more to be zombies, creatures, etc... Things which visually have some kind of horrifying attribute On the other hand, Asian ghosts are arguably completely human looking. The context and ominous expressions, etc are what supposedly make them horrifying
A lot of western ghosts are the same. They are just like apparitions of what the person looked like in life.
westerners find the use of little kids in horror to be very unsettling. ghost or not. if you show a kid alone on a swing set, at night, humming some kind of nursery rhyme...it usually freaks people out a little. the archetypal asian ghost feeds off the same fear. so yeah. we watch a lot of japanese/korean horror over here, and a lot of it has been remade.
Japanese Ghost: American Ghost: The first one is kinda scary, but I think we can all agree that the second is downright TERRIFYING.
i think most people probably find the stoic/human ghost creepier than the more overtly evil looking versions. the thing with horror is that people are more scared of whats going to happen than what just happened, or even what's happening. those creepy asian ghosts are like built-in tension. you're just waiting for them to do something.
Are we talking about just from watching movies? I'll say the Grudge was probably the scariest mainstream movie to come out in the last 10 years.
