
There have been so many engrossing dark TV series that took viewers on mind-bending journeys and truly played with their heads. While modern television has embraced much darker and more sinister stories in recent decades, it takes a truly great show to bury underneath the surface of a series narrative and deliver philosophically rich stories that strike a chord for their deep, probing themes that leave a mark on viewers consciousness well after the credits have rolled. A thought-provoking series that can play with viewers' expectations often marks the difference between a simply good show and a truly great one.
Many of the best TV shows of all time were dark in nature and did not underestimate viewers' intelligence with deeply complex and intricate narratives. Highly influential series like Twin Peaks laid the groundwork for television to embrace more challenging and experimental stories. At the same time, creators worldwide, such...
Many of the best TV shows of all time were dark in nature and did not underestimate viewers' intelligence with deeply complex and intricate narratives. Highly influential series like Twin Peaks laid the groundwork for television to embrace more challenging and experimental stories. At the same time, creators worldwide, such...
- 26/10/2024
- par Stephen Holland
- ScreenRant

Some of the most effective and engaging TV shows in recent years were also so gore-filled that audiences often had to look away in pure terror and disgust. From thrilling sci-fi dystopias to intense psychological horrors, just because a series was packed with gore, murder, and violence did not stop it from being truly great. In many cases, the excessively gruesome nature of these shows added to their appeal as they pushed the limits of what could be depicted and accepted in mainstream television.
Plenty of the most gruesomely violent TV shows were filled with gory sequences and sinister characters who committed heinous acts. From intense games that saw characters' lives on the line to sinister antiheroes who killed for the sheer thrill of it, in recent years, television has caught up with horror movies to make series that were equal to or even exceeded the most gore-filled cinematic spectacles.
Plenty of the most gruesomely violent TV shows were filled with gory sequences and sinister characters who committed heinous acts. From intense games that saw characters' lives on the line to sinister antiheroes who killed for the sheer thrill of it, in recent years, television has caught up with horror movies to make series that were equal to or even exceeded the most gore-filled cinematic spectacles.
- 12/10/2024
- par Stephen Holland
- ScreenRant


It’s official: Netflix has renewed its hit Japanese sci-fi thriller drama Alice in Borderland for a third season. Fans of the show noticed late Wednesday that Netflix had unceremoniously dropped a teaser for a third season, leading to online speculation that more episodes of the live-action show were officially in the works. At the Apos entertainment and media industry conference in Bali, Indonesia, Netflix’s vice president of content in Asia Pacific, Minyoung Kim, made the news official by announcing the renewal during a keynote talk from the stage.
Following its second season debut in December 2022, Alice in Borderland became Netflix Japan’s most-watched title ever, even including anime titles. It shot up to the Top 10 in over 90 countries, claiming the No. 1 spot in 17 of them, and clocked 200 million viewing hours worldwide.
With Kento Yamazaki and Tao Tsuchiya reprising their roles as Arisu and Usagi in Season 3, Netflix says...
Following its second season debut in December 2022, Alice in Borderland became Netflix Japan’s most-watched title ever, even including anime titles. It shot up to the Top 10 in over 90 countries, claiming the No. 1 spot in 17 of them, and clocked 200 million viewing hours worldwide.
With Kento Yamazaki and Tao Tsuchiya reprising their roles as Arisu and Usagi in Season 3, Netflix says...
- 28/09/2023
- par Patrick Brzeski
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News

The trailer for Alice in Borderland season 2 introduces deadly new games. A live-action adaptation of Haro Aso's manga series, which shares the same name, Alice in Borderland, debuted in 2020. Consisting of eight episodes and directed by Shinsuke Sato, the story follows characters who find themselves in an eerily abandoned Tokyo and are forced to compete in kill-or-be-killed competitions. As the season progressed, the show's universe expanded to reveal more secrets and a strange conspiracy that could go beyond what any protagonist expected. Though it was renewed shortly after its premiere, the second installment of the adaptation has been a long time coming.
But now, after filming wrapped on Alice in Borderland season 2 back in March, Netflix has unveiled the trailer for the upcoming episodes. Set to debut on December 22, Alice in Borderland season 2 looks like it will double down on the wild aspects of the first installment. There's an...
But now, after filming wrapped on Alice in Borderland season 2 back in March, Netflix has unveiled the trailer for the upcoming episodes. Set to debut on December 22, Alice in Borderland season 2 looks like it will double down on the wild aspects of the first installment. There's an...
- 05/12/2022
- par Abdullah Al-Ghamdi
- ScreenRant


"Your body is the Fatherland. Don't let it fall into enemy hands." Dark Star Pictures has revealed the new official US trailer for the film Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle, a French drama about a Japanese solider that originally premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival last year. Based on a true story!! Which is especially crazy when you think about it. Shot in Japanese, this international co-production tells the story of the soldier Hiroo Onoda (played by Endô Yûya) who was sent to an island in the Philippines in 1944, to fight against the American offensive. When "Japan surrenders, Onoda ignores it, trained to survive at all costs in the jungle, he keeps his war going. He will take 10,000 days to capitulate, refusing to believe the end of the Second World War." He ends up spending nearly 30 years there. The film also stars Tsuda Kanji, Matsuura Yūya, Chiba Tetsuya, Katō Shinsuke,...
- 05/10/2022
- par Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net

The twisted competition at the center of "Alice in Borderland" is back, and it looks like the games aren't done just yet. A "super teaser trailer" for season 2 of the popular show, which is based on the manga series of the same name by Haro Aso, was revealed during Netflix's Tudum fan event, and it looks like we're in for another wild ride.
The teaser shows the return of protagonists Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya) after that massive cliffhanger at the end of the last season. After completing a number of increasingly deadly challenges, they learned to their dismay that there are even more coming as the games enter a second phase. We also get our first look at some of the other contestants roped into the games, as well as shots of the sadistic gamemaster Mira (Riisa Naka), who looks to be a more menacing presence this season.
The teaser shows the return of protagonists Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya) after that massive cliffhanger at the end of the last season. After completing a number of increasingly deadly challenges, they learned to their dismay that there are even more coming as the games enter a second phase. We also get our first look at some of the other contestants roped into the games, as well as shots of the sadistic gamemaster Mira (Riisa Naka), who looks to be a more menacing presence this season.
- 24/09/2022
- par Erin Brady
- Slash Film

Music as a mirror of internal mayhem has been explored in a myriad of ways in films. In “Musicophilia”, music is given the chance, however, to reflect the convoluted protection that the society gives to men for the sake of their so-called genius, even and especially at the expense of women. This bequeaths the film, which made its global premiere at the 2022 Asian Pop-Up Cinema, another layer of depth, one that makes it more memorable aside from the inner demons conjured by family melodrama.
“Musicophilia” is screening at Asian Pop-up Cinema
Based on the webcomic of the same name, the movie introduces us to Saku Urushibara, an art student in Kyoto who, even if he wants to, just could not escape the world of music. He is literally drawn to it by his newfound friends, members of the music club in his university who pull him in to their own...
“Musicophilia” is screening at Asian Pop-up Cinema
Based on the webcomic of the same name, the movie introduces us to Saku Urushibara, an art student in Kyoto who, even if he wants to, just could not escape the world of music. He is literally drawn to it by his newfound friends, members of the music club in his university who pull him in to their own...
- 05/04/2022
- par Purple Romero
- AsianMoviePulse


The end of WWII for Japan, and particularly the fact that some of its soldiers refused or did not received the order to surrender has been one of the most dramatic episodes in the country’s history, with Kazuo Hara’s “The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On” being one of the most impactful presentations of the concept in cinema. Arthur Harari moves in the same path, choosing to base his movie on the life of Hiroo Onoda, an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who did not surrender at the war’s end in August 1945, but spent 29 years hiding in the Philippines until his former commander traveled from Japan to formally relieve him from duty by order of Emperor Showa in 1974. “Onoda” opened Cannes’ “Un Certain Regard” section in July 2021.
on Terracotta
The story unfolds in two intermingling time frames, as it starts with Onoda’s arrival in Lubang,...
on Terracotta
The story unfolds in two intermingling time frames, as it starts with Onoda’s arrival in Lubang,...
- 05/04/2022
- par Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse

No man is an island, but for 29 years, until his final surrender in 1974, Hiroo Onoda came as close as any man could. Leading an ever-dwindling band of Japanese holdouts who refused to believe their nation had lost the war, Onoda continued to carry out minor guerrilla attacks on the residents of the small Philippine island of Lubang for almost three decades, until it was just him left, hiding in the underbrush, subsisting on a diet of zealotry and whatever he could scavenge or steal.
It’s a famous, fabulously knotty, semi-surreal story, fraught with allegorical potential, but despite some length and pacing issues, it is somewhat surprisingly made, by French director Arthur Harari, into a potent, satisfying saga of old-school, muscular filmmaking. Part John Ford, part Sam Fuller, the film’s old-fashioned approach is oddly impressive: To tell this kind of story in such blunt-edged, straightforward style is a distinctive...
It’s a famous, fabulously knotty, semi-surreal story, fraught with allegorical potential, but despite some length and pacing issues, it is somewhat surprisingly made, by French director Arthur Harari, into a potent, satisfying saga of old-school, muscular filmmaking. Part John Ford, part Sam Fuller, the film’s old-fashioned approach is oddly impressive: To tell this kind of story in such blunt-edged, straightforward style is a distinctive...
- 30/07/2021
- par Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Kiyoshi Kurosawa made a break from J-Horror to direct a family drama, thus resulting in a true masterpiece of the genre that won a number of awards, including the Jury Prize of the Un Certain Regard section in Cannes.
The Sasakis are a middle class family, living a more or less regular life in Tokyo. Ryuhei, the father, is a successful senior member of a company with a more than adequate income. At some point, his company terminates his employment, thus resulting in the egress of the family’s issues. Shamed by his dismissal, he keeps it a secret by hypocritically continuing his everyday routine. He actually goes to the employment agency in the morning and spends the remainder of the day roaming the streets, until the time he usually arrives home. He meets Kurosu, another individual like him, who explains that there are many men in...
The Sasakis are a middle class family, living a more or less regular life in Tokyo. Ryuhei, the father, is a successful senior member of a company with a more than adequate income. At some point, his company terminates his employment, thus resulting in the egress of the family’s issues. Shamed by his dismissal, he keeps it a secret by hypocritically continuing his everyday routine. He actually goes to the employment agency in the morning and spends the remainder of the day roaming the streets, until the time he usually arrives home. He meets Kurosu, another individual like him, who explains that there are many men in...
- 19/01/2020
- par Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Confessions (15)
(Tetsuya Nakashima, 2010, Japan) Takako Matsu, Kai Inowaki, Yoshino Kimura, Kaoru Fujiwara, Yukito Nishii, Masaki Okada. 106 mins
From an arresting opening scene in which a teacher details to her class how her daughter was killed by two of them, and what she's done in the way of retaliation, this complex, unpredictable Japanese thriller unwinds into one of the most operatic revenge plots since Old Boy. That first half-hour sequence packs in enough for a whole movie, but this has even grander ambitions, tackling familiar teen issues – bullying, alienation, malicious texting – through shifting perspectives, slick visuals and a choice soundtrack. It's bleak and moody, but the execution is bracing.
Paul (15)
(Greg Mottola, 2011, Us) Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen. 104 mins
Pegg and Frost indulge their fanboyishness, and their non-gay buddy love, in a knockabout comedy that plays like a stoner Et. Their sci-fi-geek tourists get into scrapes when they harbour Rogen's fugitive alien in their Winnebago,...
(Tetsuya Nakashima, 2010, Japan) Takako Matsu, Kai Inowaki, Yoshino Kimura, Kaoru Fujiwara, Yukito Nishii, Masaki Okada. 106 mins
From an arresting opening scene in which a teacher details to her class how her daughter was killed by two of them, and what she's done in the way of retaliation, this complex, unpredictable Japanese thriller unwinds into one of the most operatic revenge plots since Old Boy. That first half-hour sequence packs in enough for a whole movie, but this has even grander ambitions, tackling familiar teen issues – bullying, alienation, malicious texting – through shifting perspectives, slick visuals and a choice soundtrack. It's bleak and moody, but the execution is bracing.
Paul (15)
(Greg Mottola, 2011, Us) Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen. 104 mins
Pegg and Frost indulge their fanboyishness, and their non-gay buddy love, in a knockabout comedy that plays like a stoner Et. Their sci-fi-geek tourists get into scrapes when they harbour Rogen's fugitive alien in their Winnebago,...
- 19/02/2011
- par The Guide
- The Guardian - Film News
(Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and actor Teruyuki Kagawa, during the shooting of Tokyo Sonata, above.)
By Terry Keefe
This article is currently appearing in this month's Venice Magazine.
For filmmaker Kiyoski Kurosawa, it wasn’t that big a leap from the horror genre to the domestic-style terrors of a family melodrama. Kurosawa made his bones on horror-based stories such as 1997’s Cure, but his newest, Tokyo Sonata, follows the dissolution, and partial rebirth, of a Japanese traditional family, with no supernatural elements in play. Kurosawa’s trademark evocation of creeping dread and anxiety remain, however, and you still are never sure about what is around the next corner in his new work. Says Kurosawa about stepping outside his more familiar realm of murders and the supernatural, “Obviously, since this wasn’t a horror film, one change was that I didn’t have to make it deliberately frightening. But the part of...
By Terry Keefe
This article is currently appearing in this month's Venice Magazine.
For filmmaker Kiyoski Kurosawa, it wasn’t that big a leap from the horror genre to the domestic-style terrors of a family melodrama. Kurosawa made his bones on horror-based stories such as 1997’s Cure, but his newest, Tokyo Sonata, follows the dissolution, and partial rebirth, of a Japanese traditional family, with no supernatural elements in play. Kurosawa’s trademark evocation of creeping dread and anxiety remain, however, and you still are never sure about what is around the next corner in his new work. Says Kurosawa about stepping outside his more familiar realm of murders and the supernatural, “Obviously, since this wasn’t a horror film, one change was that I didn’t have to make it deliberately frightening. But the part of...
- 13/04/2009
- par The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
KYÔKO Koizumi, Inowaki Kai, Teruyuki Kagawa, And YÛ Koyanagi In Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa'S Tokyo Sonata. Courtesy Regent Releasing. Over the past decade or so, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has established himself as one of the most interesting genre directors in world cinema. The Japanese writer-director was born in Kobe in 1955, and first made 8mm shorts while studying Sociology at Rikko University. He began directing features in the early 1980s, working on direct-to-video titles, including yakuza movies, and studied under the tutelage of directors Shinji Somai and Kazuhiko Hasegawa. He then had minor successes with films like the college-set drama The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl (1985) and the blackly comic thriller Guard from the...
- 25/03/2009
- par Nick Dawson
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
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