Spent the good part of New Year’s Eve at my place with a couple of friends, watching horror movies and having quite a blast of a time getting outselves frightened. Well for someone who grew up watching Carrie and Pet Semetary at the tender age of 7, nothing in horror movies really frightens me anymore (I mean the kind of feeling where you just wanna get the heck outta there - that kind of scared), but it was fun TRYING to be scared. Maybe its a group mentality thing. Getting scared together.

Anyway, it occured to me that I generally find Asian horror flicks scarier than their Western counterparts. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that the setting, mood and characters hit closer to home. Makes it all the more believable. I probably won’t end up in a huge haunted mansion during the course of my lifetime here, but taking photographs with ghostly faces in them, now THAT I can imagine. Put that into an Asian setting - all the scarier, with our various superstitions and all.

This brings about an important question : Do I feel this way because I’m Asian and I register with the movie due to cultural similarities, or is the simple truth just that Asian horror movies are just scarier? For non Asian readers out there who have watched both Asian and Western Horror, what do you think? Do you find Western horror movies more frightening?

I admit that it’s difficult to compare because of the different styles of filmmaking by different cultures and industries, but let’s just put this to the test and see what comes out of it.

Oh, and er…Happy New Year to one and all.