The Haapsalu horror and fantasy film festival starting today will honour the Japanese ghost movie maker with life work award, even though it is early to call him «grandmaster» – Mr Nakata’s newest film also featuring in Haapsalu.
«I don’t really like horror movies, I just like to make movies,» somewhat surprisingly, Mr Nakata confesses in a flash interview to Postimees.
First of all: congrats, Nakata-san! I hope this doesn’t mean your life work is done – at 51?
(Laughs.) I hope not. Still, I have to admit I have received one such reward already, seven years ago at the Gerardmer fantasy film festival, in France. I felt real early, even then. But it is still nice to be recognised.
You broke through, internationally, with Ring, which became the cornerstone of J-horror – the Japanese horror movie new wave. 15 years have passed. How is your national horror movie doing?
Sadly, no good news. I don’t want to tell that whatever started 15 years back is totally finished, but the fact remains that Hollywood no longer makes repeat versions of our movies. I guess it became too much, the public over there is fed up movies like that. The same goes for Japanese viewers, horror movie is far from its popularity back then.