At first I thought the audience didn’t like it. world premiere “Orang Ikan” The Tokyo International Film Festival was scheduled to start at 11:35, which isn’t exactly prime time for a creature movie. But sometimes it happens at festivals too. And audiences were subdued, barely reacting to the gory scenes in which the titular monster, a humanoid gill monster à la “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” rips hearts out of people’s chests and slices an alligator in half. At the end there was polite applause.

It was the exact opposite of genre festival screenings I’ve attended in North America; Here, when something ugly happened, cheering as if you were at a sporting event was a sign of respect. “Orang Ikan” is solid; There’s barely any fat in this 83-minute feature, which chains its heroes of World War II-era POWs together at the ankles, “The Defiant Ones” style. (Or “Black Mama, White Mama, for the exploitation crowd.”) Director Mike Wiluan worked as a producer on “Monkey Man” and “The Night Comes for Us,” and his film shares those films’ devotion to gonzo excess. Nothing revolutionary, but I’m having a good time at the movies.

And the audience it was having a good time. As TIFF prepares for its 37th edition, it is a fact that loud and excessively public demonstrations are frowned upon in Tokyo by the mayors of Shibuya and Shinjuku. Drinking alcohol on the streets is prohibited on Halloween Because both locals and foreigners were getting a little too rowdy. (Halloween is new in Japan, a boozy holiday like St. Patrick’s Day.) It’s not like people here don’t like to have fun: That much is obvious when walking down any street packed with bars on a Friday night. There are certain places where de-stressing is encouraged, and a film festival is not one of them.

It gets really interesting when this unspoken sense of etiquette interacts with films like “Orang Ikan” and “Orang Ikan”.Twilight of Warriors: WalledAnother exciting genre selection showcase at this year’s TIFF. Directed by Johnnie To protégè Soi Cheang, this action epic is a throwback to the noble Hong Kong action films of the ’80s, built on the principles of brotherhood, loyalty and defense of the weak.

The players are divided into two groups of charismatic action stars: Legends (Sammo HungLouis Koo, Richie Jen) and up-and-comers (Raymond Lam, Phillip Ng). This fits the flow of the story, which follows the struggle for control in the now-demolished slum of Kowloon Walled City, where one generation grows old and a new one arrives. The characters are colorful; A street doctor who sells illegal porn on the internet. On the one hand, there’s a snickering, bony villain with supernatural strength and resilience, and the story is engaging, with moments of sincere nostalgia and light comedy. (Tokyo film festival audience laughs at jokes; HE It’s hard for the crowd.)

But what really catapults “Twilight” into the stratosphere is the action. As Ng noted in the post-screening Q&A, supernatural martial arts are associated with ballistic, fleet-footed wuxia. But “Twilight” combines magical abilities (sometimes literally) with bone-crunching kicks and punches. And the result is exhilarating. Stunt coordinator Kenji Tanigaki was also a real presence on stage, making this the liveliest screening I’ve ever attended in Tokyo – even if I suppressed the urge to literally stand up and cheer.

But while audiences’ reactions to genre films vary by region, some feelings also vary across cultures. Before the world premiere “Lost Child Videotape” Actors praised Ryota Kondo’s feature debut as superior to horror movies that use loud sounds to surprise the audience. “They’re talking about jump scares,” I thought. This was an idea I’d heard many times before from Western filmmakers, and I was thrilled to realize that horror fans around the world found this technique rather cheap.

And Kondo’s film is actually the opposite; is an exercise in oppressive fear that builds to almost unbearable levels before ending on the kind of unresolved note that follows you home from the film’s haunted mountain setting. Kondo said in her introduction that she grew up with J-horror movies and was influenced by J-horror movies. Hideo Nakata (“The Ring,” “Dark Water”), Kiyoshi Kurosawa (“Pulse,” Treatment”) and Takashi Shimizu (“Ju-On: The Grudge”) is all over “The Lost Child Videotape.” I mean this as a compliment.

This film bears many signatures of J-horror, including blending urban alienation with ancient terror and blending found footage with traditional narrative filmmaking. (I’m going to be pedantic here and make a distinction between “J-horror,” a movement led by the aforementioned directors, and Japanese horror film as a whole.) Yurei Particularly effective are those (ghosts) that lurk in the background, unseen but felt by terrified characters. We can say that Kondo has an unshakable belief in the supernatural, and this belief is completely captured by the reality of the film.

Shimizu executive produced “Lost Child Videotape,” and the mood at TIFF is hailing Kondo as the next big thing in Japanese horror. The heyday of the J-horror subgenre in the 90s and 2000s is long gone. And while popular franchises like “The Grudge” may still be limping along, there’s plenty of room for a new master of what are called “horror shows” in Japanese to excel at home and abroad. Anecdotally, I have noticed a growing interest in J-horror among young moviegoers I know, and I hope to see “The Lost Child Videotape” make its international festival debut soon.

One Japanese director who is particularly respected in Western horror circles is Kiyoshi Kurosawa; her “Cure” and “Pulse” are the culmination of Kondo’s slow-burning uneasiness in “The Lost Child Videotape.” (The ghost under the stairs in “Pulse” is, in my opinion, the scariest horror scene ever filmed.) Kurosawa doesn’t just make horror movies, atmospheric horror is one of his signatures. So I had to ask during the Q&A session at his excellent TIFF masterclass exploring his filmmaking process and philosophy.

According to Kurosawa, the art of directing is all about knowing when to give up control. “You can be very meticulous about the things you care about, but you need to know what to leave to the professionals working around you,” he said. “I believe that’s the director’s job.” He believes that where creative visions diverge is “the most interesting part of filmmaking” and has encouraged an audience of film students from across Asia to watch as many diverse films as possible to develop a shorthand for communicating his ideas. Diversifying your tastes “helps you shapeshift along the way,” he said. “You may start at one point and end at a very different point, but you will still be satisfied because you will see the potential of what can happen.”

His personal primary interests are camera work and mise-en-scène sceneAccording to him, it is closely linked to location. “The most important thing for me is location hunting,” he said. “There are just words in the script, but once you determine the location you can start to imagine (what it will look like). He added: “It’s a pretty intuitive feeling. but when I find the (right) place, I feel the urge to film it. In the actual shot there will be actors and you see it in the background. For me it is very important that this is in the framework. … The setting informs the actors’ movements… When you do this in a real place, an organic place, their movements will be organic, too.”

At the end of the speech, the moderator handed the microphone to the audience. And despite all my uneasiness (if Kiyoshi Kurosawa calls me a fool in front of a crowd, I’m afraid I’ll never recover) I stood up and asked my most burning question: How does he manage to get that terrible feeling of emptiness in his head? movies? He thought for a moment, and for a different reason, my stomach turned. Then he gave the answer befitting a master:

“Sound design creates more concerns than visuals: How you create sound is something I can be very particular about. But the feeling of fear or foreboding, I don’t actually explain these clearly. Some of you may want to make a horror movie; Here’s a tip from me. It’s not that hard to do something scary. The most foreboding thing is that you don’t know if it’s supposed to be scary or not. When you don’t know what you’re seeing or what that figure (in the frame) is going to do…leaving the viewer with no definitive answer, that’s what creates tension. If you want the audience to be scared, don’t try to scare them.”