Japan's Scariest Horror Movies

According to this survey (in Japanese) conducted by Oricon Research, the Japanese horror film or film series that is regarded as the scariest of all time by the Japanese people themselves is the Ringu series. This is followed by the One Missed Call series and the Ju-on series.

The Top 10 scariest Japanese movies based on the survey are:

1. Ringu Series (Rasen/Ringu/Ringu 2/Ringu 0)

2. One Missed Call Series (One Missed Call / One Missed Call 2)

3. Ju-on (The Grudge) Series (Ju-On 1 / Ju-On 2)

4. Dark Water

5. Scary True Stories: Ten Haunting Tales from the Japanese Underground Series

6. Gakko no Kaidan 学校の怪談 (Haunted School) series (Gakko no Kaidan 1 / 2 / 3 / 4)

7. Kansen (Infection)

8. Shikoku

9. Junji Inagawa (稲川淳二) series

10. Kuroi Ie (The Black House)

Actually, from this list, the popularity of horror films is clearly shown by the number of films that have been made into "series" with each series comprising of a few successful and not so successful sequels. In the above list, I think only Dark Water, Kansen, Shikoku and Kuroi Ie do not have sequels (yet).

I have not seen all the films in this list but to me, the scariest Japanese horror film is still the first Ringu movie, it not only set the standard for subsequent movies like Dark Water, One Missed Call and Ju-on, it also revived the Asian horror film genre and set the stage for Korean, Hong Kong and Thai horror movies to capture a big piece of the box-office pie in Asia and beyond.

Tags: Japanese horror movie, Japanese horror film, Ringu, The Ring, One Missed Call, Ju-on, The Grudge, Dark Water, Scary True Stories: Ten Haunting Tales from the Japanese Underground, Gakko no Kaidan, Gakkou no Kwaidan, Haunted School, Kansen, Shikoku, Junji Inagawa, The Black House, Kuroi Ie, Top 10 Horror Movies.