Japanese horror anime take center stage for Halloween

This Halloween, American slashers are being set aside in favor of Japanese horror anime. A selection of five anime films and series offers a unique and different way to experience fear, drawing on psychological tension and visual creativity.

Another’s eerie high school curse

Among the most notable horror anime of the 2010s, Another (2012) stands out for its unsettling and paranoid atmosphere. The story follows a high school class haunted by a curse, where students die one after another, victims of increasingly macabre accidents.

Spirale’s geometric body horror

Spirale (2024), adapted from the indispensable manga Uzumaki, redefines body horror based on simple geometric shapes. The four episodes take place in the misty city of Kurouzu-cho, struck by a sick obsession with spiral shapes, showcasing disturbing visual ingenuity.

Perfect Blue’s psychological descent

Perfect Blue (1997) by Satoshi Kon blurs the boundaries between dream and reality in a psychological thriller. A former pop star decides to become an actress, only to find herself offered roles that become increasingly compromising, irreversibly affecting her mental health.

Devilman Crybaby’s demonic descent

Devilman Crybaby (2018) sees Masaaki Yuasa and Netflix collaborate to tell the story of Akira, a teenager who merges with a demon to protect humanity from their threat. Between visual experiments and a techno soundtrack, the anime takes viewers on a descent into hell, where fear of the other and tribal reflexes run wild.

Memories’ sci-fi horror anthology

Memories (1995) is a film composed of three short films that address horror in a space universe where technology and human memories turn against their creators. Katsuhiro Otomo, Kōji Morimoto and Satoshi Kon mix gothic, science fiction and opera music to create an anxious atmosphere, marked by loneliness and melancholy.