Need scary movies? Asian horror is just for you

“Save the Green Planet” (2003)
This oddball horror-comedy by South Korean director Joo-Hwan Jang is ostensibly about an alien invasion of Earth — or, at least, the invasion that nerdy loner Byeong-gu (played by Shin Ha-kyun) is convinced is secretly happening. But as the story unfolds, it becomes an audaciously weird character study, as Byeong-gu and his sweetly naïve circus-acrobat girlfriend kidnap a powerful executive that they think is actually the leader of the extraterrestrial invasion force. But the central question is, are the aliens real, or is Byeong-gu crazy? “Green Planet” constantly shifts its tone between goofy satire, unbearably intense torture sequences, a noirish cop subplot, and a truly bizarre sequence inspired by “2001: A Space Odyssey” and Scientology explaining what Byeong-gu thinks the aliens are really up to. If they don’t always work smoothly together, the disparate elements of “Save the Green Planet” certainly keep you on your toes.

“Wild Zero” (2000)
Japan’s “Wild Zero” plays off of a lot more than just zombie films — there are also riffs on 1950s alien-invasion sci-fi, Elvis movies and 1980s punk-era comedies like “Rock And Roll High School.” When aliens invade Earth and bring the dead back to life, it’s up to a bumbling and naïve garage-rock fan named Ace and his heroes, the hilariously supercool rockabilly/punk trio Guitar Wolf — a real band who are sort of Japan’s answer to The Ramones, and who appear in the movie playing themselves. “Wild Zero” doesn’t take itself seriously for an instant, except for the well-handled love story between Ace and his Thai girlfriend Tobio, who has a secret we won’t spoil here. This is a nearly pitch-perfect midnight movie, in which a horde of zombie and aliens meets its match in the awesome power of rock ’n’ roll, and where a guy cuts a spaceship in half with a samurai sword. If that’s not your idea of a good time, then brother, I don’t want to know what is.

“Bio Zombie” (1998)
Hong Kong’s “Bio-Zombie” is sort of “Shaun Of The Dead” meets “Clerks” meets “Dawn Of The Dead.” The zombie infestation here centers on the oddly deserted shopping mall where two bootleg-video clerks named Woody and Bee work — well, that’s too strong a term; they’re really just a couple of shiftless slackers and small-change con artists, harassed by the stuck-up guy who owns the cell-phone shop and desperate to make a little love connection with the hotties who work at the beauty salon. An Iraqi-made biological weapon eventually floods the mall with shambling flesh-eaters, and you can guess most of the rest of the plot: A small group of survivors has to fight their way to safety. It’s not the plot that matters, though — what makes “Bio-Zombie” great fun is the anarchic sense of humor, the deft characterizations, and the clever, knowing winks at previous zombie movies. Skip the English-language dubbing, full of clumsy and unfunny morning-zoo humor, and go for the subtitled Cantonese version.

“Audition” (1999)
In the most acclaimed movie by Japan’s phenomenally prolific Takashi Miike — who’s credited with directing 75 movies so far, an average of more than four per year — a lonely widower named Aoyama decides on an unconventional method of looking for a new girlfriend by holding a fake audition for a movie so he can meet dozens of women — but the one he chooses has, to put it mildly, a hidden dark side. The sense of dread takes its time building up; in fact, for much of the first hour, the lonely Aoyama’s pursuit of Asami seems like a conventional love story. But then we see that hidden in her apartment, Asami has something human-sized tied up in a canvas bag… After that, “Audition” makes a sharp turn into a land of bizarre psychological trauma, wronged innocence, sexual obsession and vengeful sadism, a kind of David Lynchian unreality where you can’t be sure that what you’re seeing is exactly what’s happening, but you have a dreadful feeling that it is. Be warned that the final 30 minutes are almost unbearably intense, and probably helped inspire the trend of “torture porn” movies like “Saw.” Certainly in terms of visceral shocks, the reputation of “Audition” is well deserved.

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