Fill your pockets with pujok, omamori and fu talismans! Here are 11 Asian animated tales of spooks, spirits, monsters and mystery — a mixed bag of the magical and the macabre in techniques including stop-motion, CG, paper-cut and hand-drawn animation. World premieres abound and astound in this shivery showcase: Japan’s Kiyotaka Oshiyama presents SHISHIGARI, the calling card for his new, independent Studio Durian. A gripping, primal adventure, with music by the legendary Kenji Kawai! In ANOTHER, from South Korea’s Park Yeon, two boys were twins in the womb, but only one has a place in the world of the living. Also from South Korea is Kim Se-yoon’s RAINY SEASON: something’s not right, on such a dreadful night. And, an inquisitive, acquisitive little imp makes itself at home in the stop-motion concoction THE HOUSE RATTLER, from Japan’s Shinobu Soejima.
A queasy quintet of North American premieres lurk in the shadows as well. In a world not ruled by humans, a boy won’t let his dreams be stolen — and such dark dreams they are, in GOLDFISH, a riotous descent into a supernatural dystopia from Taiwan’s Fish Wang. New Beijing-based studio Escape Velocity step out with Cao Runze’s SPIRIT OF THE DROWNING GIRLS, a sharply-etched slice of sorcerous wuxia in which good deeds have dire consequences. A little handful of life isn’t only thing that a couple of coins will buy you in THE DEATH VENDOR, a desolate meditation from South Korea’s Jeon Jinkyu, and THE SIX is an eerie puzzle box from China’s Xi Chen and Xu An, and TEMPURA is an appalling delight to digest from Japan’s “gekimation” revivalist Ujicha (VIOLENCE VOYAGER). A maiden faces a malevolent snake-devil’s wrath in Wan Jingyue and Du Jinzhi’s made-in-the-USA short THE GIRL AND THE SERPENT, and the big bad wolf haunts MY LITTLE GOAT, a dark, stop-motion variant on familiar fairy-tale frights from Japan’s Tomoki Misato. – Rupert Bottenberg
