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You are all alone, slowly creeping your way down a mysterious hallway. Where are you? You’re unsure. But you know two things; it’s very dark, and you probably shouldn’t stay much longer. You see a door ahead, and start moving toward your potential escape. Right as you reach the handle with the tips of your fingers… something behind you, approaching fast. Too fast. You whip your head around just in time to see and...CUT!
Well...what did you see? Was it some grizzly monster? The restless spirit of a woman scorned, who died of a broken heart in that very hallway? A serial killer? Yourself !?
There are any number of creatures that hypothetically go bump in the night, so it would be next-to-impossible for me to guess. However, a good way to narrow down the options would be to ask a simple question; do you believe in ghosts? No? Just kidding...the real question is; do you believe that your body is essentially a temporary home for your soul? The answer to this question, however variable, could likely be traced back to one’s culture. Religion, traditions, and spiritual beliefs all factor in. There is also a direct correlation to this cultural phenomenon and whatever terror you pictured chasing you down that hallway, as it was likely ripped directly from a horror film. I believe that horror as a genre has been most influenced by these looming ideas of the body and soul, and the depictions of ghostly phenomenon in horror cinema across the globe give a perfect insight into any region’s spiritual (or non-spiritual) history.
The core concept that the body is not much more than a vessel for the intangible mind/spirit/god (which I will just refer to as the soul for convenience sake) is one that resonates in so many cultures; dualism. The bible puts it very simply when it states “Your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God.” While not all dualist cultures are that absolute about it, the concept is very similar throughout. The cliche “the body is a temple” comes to mind, but how legitimately a culture believes this is the common distinction between dualism and its opposing partner, monism. The exact definition of monism is harder to pinpoint. Generally it is the belief that the body and the soul either exist as one harmonious cosmic being, or do not exist separately at all. This can take the form of stringent atheism; pushing the scientific ideas of the body being essentially a sack of nerves that only knows how to react to stimuli. But monist ideas don’t always have to lean purely toward the agnostic, in fact many spiritual practices are very monist-leaning. The concepts of monism and dualism are much like the supposed soul itself; vague, ever-shifting, and undefinable. I believe they are the driving force for countless cultural touchstones, culminating in every nook and cranny of popular culture, most especially horror.
When mentioning dualism it is almost impossible not to think of the absolutely global and at-times-overbearing presence of Christianity. The aforementioned bible quote literally states that our bodies are just vessels for God to work through, and the idea of a heavenly afterlife where good souls become angels is as blatantly dualist as it gets. Of course when mentioning Christianity, its origins in Europe spring to mind too. I’ll spare us from the grueling process of going over the history of Christianity’s evolution in the West (as it in and of itself is a horror story in many ways) and will continue with the general understanding that the two are simply inseparable. These religious sentiments have found their way into quite literally all parts of Western culture, in the most expansive history taught from first to twelfth grade to the Catholic schoolgirl outfit Britney Spears wore in her infamous ‘Oops I Did it Again’ music video. It seems you cannot throw a stone in any Western country without hitting a direct cultural descendant of European Christianity. Even the current eurocentric United States as we know it was established as a direct descendant of this specific religious power, as the first colonizers were largely Puritans. So it isn’t a stretch to say that modern America has an arguably deeper rooted tie to the religious beliefs they were built on.
Oftentimes the looming influence of Christianity and its many sects on iconic American works are overlooked, but simply because it has become such a repetitive and normalized theme that we’ve become numb to it. Daisy from The Great Gatsby? Catholic. The O’Haras from Gone with the Wind? Christian. The cats from Cats? Well their religion is unspecified, but biblical undertones and cliches are still woven throughout this story too. This running theme of Christianity being present both subtly and overtly in a large percentage of stories stretches to all corners of American media, even when these stories don’t have much to do with spirituality or religion at their cores. Now take a beat to consider American horror films, which more often than not explicitly deal with religious imagery, the afterlife, and spiritual phenomenon. The countless ties these works have to Christian-dualist sentiments become almost blindingly apparent, from the beginnings of Hollywood to your favorite scary flick from the past few years.
It is honestly impossible to speak on American horror history without briefly mentioning its European predecessors, since the first 20-or-so years of Hollywood horror are almost exclusively adaptations of European stories. The French Le Manoir du Diablo is hailed as the first “scary” film ever created, and even in its glorious runtime of roughly 3 minutes showcases a healthy dose of obviously Christian-dualist ideas. Imagery of ghastly animated skeletons, literal spectres of the dead clad in white sheets, and the devil himself all call back to a strong dualist viewpoint in this pioneering skit. The first true-American Hollywood horror film was Frankenstein (1910), which was a reinterpretation of the original novel (1818) by the English author Mary Shelley. The novel on its own already has many clear ties to dualism, the most glaring being the monster’s creation itself. Resurrection is a very powerful biblical theme, pulling from the rising of Christ, so in essence this character being composed of reanimated parts is telling of these influences. The American adaptation actually took these dualist themes even farther. The first scene many think of when picturing Frankenstein is the famous sequence of the monster’s creation, in the doctor’s laboratory waiting for a decisive bolt of lightning to spring the creature to life. In actuality Shelley totally omits any scene of this creation process in the original novel, meaning it’s entirely a fabrication of the American film makers, and therefore is a stark reminder of just how deeply these spiritual ideas run in Hollywood. The premise of a lifeless husk needing some vivifying force, a jolt of energy, a soul to become alive is at the most basic and obvious level of dualist principles, setting the corporeal and the ethereal self as two separate and tandem forces. This essentially set the trend for the rest of American Horror cinema to follow, as this body-soul relationship would be echoed through most classic benchmark films in the genre. Night of the Living Dead, the film that launched a thousand more zombie flicks to follow, deals with similarly dualist ideas of reanimation. The Exorcist, often claimed to be the pinnacle of American Horror, is steeped from start to end in Catholic depictions of spirits hopping from body-to-body. Even The Shining, who’s main antagonist is a non-spiritual psychotic man with an axe, is driven to insanity by looming apparitions of the past. You can try and run, but it is pretty obvious you can’t hide from Christian-dualist influence on Hollywood Horror.
Now you may be thinking about some of the most iconic American horror films that don’t explicitly deal with a spiritual phenomenon. Take Friday the 13th, inarguably one of the State’s most world-famous horror franchises. The original film ends with (spoiler alert) the killer being just your average, deranged mother and her admittedly spooky-but-very-much-alive son in a lake. You may be thinking “There are no ties to dualism or christianity here, this is just normal people killing each other!” and that’s where you’d be wrong. Thanks to the wonderful world of campy horror sequels and post-credit scenes, almost all of Hollywood’s most iconic non-spiritual villains get the classic dualist treatment eventually. A dead Carrie White’s ghostly hand explodes out of her grave. Michael Meyers is resurrected by a hilariously halloween-y death cult.
Jason Voorhees literally goes to what can only be described as Christian Hell, in the aptly titled sequel Jason Goes to Hell. Even when you think you’ve escaped dualist influences in scary movies, Hollywood’s hiding under the bed waiting to pop out and stab you with a comically large knife that reads “Christianity” across the blade. Of course the West is well known to be rather ham-fisted when it comes to depicting their spirituality and Christianity in any medium, so a lot of these religious influences on horror could be chalked up to that. I would believe this theory too, if it weren’t for the fact that regionally-specific spiritual themes are dominant in horror all over the world, similarly in the East as well.
Spirituality in the East, as opposed to the aforementioned ham-fisted West, is much harder to pare down. Eastern spiritual practices have existed, intermingled and evolved since before Christainity’s inception, and are often much less defined than Western ideas of worship. The term ‘religion’ itself won’t really even work here, as many Eastern-born spiritualities are viewed as ways of life rather than organized religions. So ‘practice’ will be subbed in its place. I apologize in advance for speaking so generally about this topic, but speaking definitively on it would just be ignorant, and that thought is too scary for me to risk.
To once again spare us the long grueling task of cataloguing the history of Eastern practice, I’ll just speak on a solid focal point of understanding; Buddhism. Buddhism is one of the top 5 most observed practices in the world, but it’s common misnomer as a ‘religion’ leaves many confused on its beliefs. Buddhism is actually a strongly monist practice, promoting the cyclical relations of energy, the body and the world as an ethereal whole rather than as binary like many other dualist systems. Buddhism is being used as the framing of this idea because it spread like wildfire throughout all of Asia, arguably more than any other practice. Still today sizable populations of Buddhist followers exist in Asia’s most powerful countries, like India, China, Japan, and Korea. But the true usefulness in Buddhism as a quick entry-point to this magical world of spirituality is the way it has mingled with countless other notable Eastern practices. This means the common themes of monism are aplenty in Asia when looking through this lens, no matter where you point it. A prime example of this is the spiritual practices of Japan, which also just so happens to be one of the world’s biggest haunted-power-houses when it comes to the horror genre.
Like many practices from its neighboring Eastern countries, spirituality in Japan is not nearly as set in stone as most popular Western religions. The traditional faith of the Japanese people has existed as long as the country itself, and is generally known as Shinto. Shinto is a prime example of less-defined Eastern spirituality, as it has no sole founder, ultimate central text, or singular almighty deity at its core. Its practices and beliefs are deeply intertwined with all parts of Japanese culture, and is still the most identified-with belief system in the country today. Having coexisted and mingled with Buddhism since its introduction in the 6th century, the two faiths melded well together by way of their shared monistic, omnipresent views of natural forces and unseen powers. Worshipped spirits of nature known as Kami are at the center of Shintoism, and are said to exist in all things, establishing a strong cycle of energy that connects everything from creation through death, and well after. Malevolent spirits are also prominent in Japanese folklore, known as Yokai, which are often created or transformed from sources of immense negative energy. They can range from urban-legend-like creatures that terrorize unsuspecting citizens to demon-esque monsters that feed on pain and strife, and innumerable other dastardly variants. Yokai all share a common trait of malice and mischief toward humans, and were the basis of many Japanese fireside-scary-stories, so it’s unsurprising that they also became the basis for what would eventually develop into the globally feared J-Horror industry.
The first Japanese Horror film, Onibaba, shows the influence of Yokai on the regional genre from the get-go. It centers around 2 women who ambush wandering soldiers, and then pawn off their possessions for food and supplies. One woman dawns a monstrous mask to trick others into believing she is a Yokai, and is eventually transformed into a grotesque monster herself due to the negative energy she manifested from her misdeeds. This plot not only set the trend for monistic Yokai-based J-Horror films, but also established the specific type of Yokai that they are most often focused on; the scorned woman. Unlike the Western trope of the stuffy spirits of deceased Victorian women haunting their mansions, the Japanese idea of the once-woman Yokai are created from a less binary process, as the negative energy from any sort of traumatic experience can do the trick. Abuse, betrayal, heartbreak, loneliness, and any number of death-inducing events could cause a build up of pure negative energy in women, which transforms them into demon-like Yokai who use their immense supernatural powers to seek revenge and repentance for their suffering. Perhaps the best illustration of this trope can be found in one of the most classic J-Horror films, Hausu, which centers on exactly that; a woman who transforms into a transcendent being after dealing with overwhelming neglect and loneliness in her old country home. Her dark spirit intertwines with the house she was so tortured in, creating a completely new apparition that controls the woman, the building, all of its contents, and anyone who steps inside simultaneously. This is the perfect display of how monist Japanese spiritual beliefs can be, as this vague and all-encompassing natural force contrasts Western-dualist imagery of spirits merely inhabiting and haunting a space as separate entities. Yokai born of scorned women have become one of the most common themes in J-Horror to this day, and are the central plotlines for so many films that have launched into global popularity, like The Grudge and Ringu, both of which have received Americanized remakes.
Ringu and its subsequent Hollywood adaptation The Ring are actually the perfect tools to showcase the monsit and/or dualist influences on their respective culture’s of origin, since they tell the same story from uniquely regional perspectives. Author Valerie Wee wrote a stunning comparison of the two films’ cinematography, mentioning what I believe to be the key points of difference between the cultures. Wee notes that Hollywood often focuses on “the literal, the real life, and the representative,” which opposes Japan’s tendencies toward “form over narrative, presentation over representation.” Wee was speaking on the two films’ cinematic styles and techniques, but these quotes still easily stand relevant when shifting toward our focus of the historic influences on the depictions of spiritual phenomenon in horror. The plot of these films is overarching, both following a young woman as she investigates a string of mysterious deaths that all seem to point to an unassuming videotape as the common denominator. Watching this tape will ensure the viewer dies within 7 days by the hand of (you guessed it) the malicious spirit of a young woman. But the differing contents of said tape from each version of the film is the true goldmine for making this cultural comparison. The Japanese scene is rife with Eastern-monist influences, showing a series of seemingly unrelated but still eerie clips that suggest a thread of negative energy that connects everything. Clips of human figures are cut with shots of nature; the moon, forests, and the ocean, which all suggest that the murderous spirit that is summoned is intertwined with these forces in a much broader sense rather than being from a single dead woman. The American version directly contrasts this, and feeds rather comically into the ham-fisted tag that they have previously earned. Instead of staying faithful to the artfully suggestive imagery of the film it was based on, the American version of the tape is much more on-the-nose, opting for a simple gross-out method of scariness. Shots of empty chairs moving on their own, big scary bugs, dying animals, and severed fingers compose the cursed tape in this version. Instead of implying the spirit’s more ethereal origins like its predecessor, The Ring’s tape literally shows a woman jumping to her death off a cliff, leaving little-to-no room to guess where the ghoul originated from. The stylistic differences of depicting the soul-to-body relationship in these otherwise parallel films is an almost frighteningly obvious indicator of their countries’ spiritual beliefs, despite being essentially the same exact story, which goes to show how dominant these influences really are in horror cinema all over the world.
Obviously The Ring would never have existed without Ringu, but many would also argue that Ringu would never have been made without the Hollywood horror that came before it. This game of cultural tag could be traced back and forth to no end, as pop-cultures around the world are constantly mixing, influencing, and challenging each other. Maybe Japan’s cinematic industry wouldn’t be where it is today without Hollywood, but it also wouldn’t exist at all without the regional spiritual practices that undoubtedly facilitated and shaped it as an art form. This rings true for Hollywood as well, and the evidence of these soul-to-body influences doesn’t stop there. Bollywood slashers, dramatic K-Horror, twisted German flicks, Italian Gialo films and any other obscure spooky sub-genre you can muster up were all shaped to fit the diverse spiritual practices of these countries, and designed to mess with the minds of their respective thrill seeking populations. Monism and dualism are the common thread here, the proverbial ghost haunting this global industry for eternity, from inception to today and surely beyond. From the feminine apparitions of pure bad energy in Japan, to the American cliche of watching a transparent spectre rise out of a freshly killed character, it would frankly be impossible to detail the complete and total influence of monism and dualism on horror film in this short writing. Maybe it’ll be explored more in some direct-to-tv sequels, or the unnecessary remake bound to happen in 10 or so years. Until then, the most important point to take away here is…wait…
behind you...
LOOK OUT...
BOO!