The New York Asian Film Festival is arguably most famous for its horror films. As The New Yorker recently documented, a critic staggered out of one of the more gruesome screenings several years ago, emitted a gurgle, and then dropped in a dead faint in the lobby.
This year provided no exception to the high scary quotient. Along with art-house dramas, broad comedies, and martial arts- and Japanese comic-derived movies, the festival featured the likes of Juon: The Grudge, soon to be remade into a Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicle; Doppelganger, about an innocuous engineer whose evil double is taking over his life; and Marronnier, which features a mad genius who turns women into satanic killer dolls.