Finding Resonance with the Technophobic Narratives of Y2K J-horror
The eerie dial-up screech that cuts through Pulse works like a stand-in for a heartbeat, mechanical rhythm replacing a human one. It’s a sound I recognize but have never actually experienced. Whenever it pops up in a movie, I’m struck by how uncanny it feels – the internet grinding and screeching like a physical machine. It’s reminiscent not only of time but of a specific culture: computers as alternative, rebellious, and personal, without any of that sleek MacBook discretion we’re used to now. Seeing these technologies in film has always felt a little like escapism – a world where these devices were just enough and not too much.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 film Pulse, one of the better-known Japanese horror films from around the turn of the 21st century, presents a version of Tokyo literally haunted by computers and dial-up internet. As ghosts begin entering the human-realm via computers, the film seems to express discomfort with the relationship between digital technologies and human isolation. The dreary cityscapes and dark apartments compound this atmosphere of oppressive loneliness and connect it back to the emergence of home internet.
Pulse, however, is not the only film from this period exploring and critiquing the emergence of contemporary electronics. Ringu, and its American counterpart The Ring, holds a remarkable position in film culture and culture more broadly. This narrative was so culturally ubiquitous that it terrified me years before I ever watched the film, snaking its way through elementary school lunch lines like a true ghost story. Partly structured as a film-within-a-film, Ringu follows a journalist who must track down the origins of a cursed VHS tape to save her son. While they likely feel incredibly outdated now, VHS/VCR style videotapes began entering homes in the 1980s, making them just over ten years old when Ringu released – still relatively new technology. Their initial newness and technological impenetrability likely made the cursed videotape scary then, while their outdatedness and low image quality keep them useful in horror media today (with the relatively recent VHS franchise of films being a prime example).
In tandem with Pulse and Ringu, the landlines and flip phones of Ju-on: The Grudge and One Missed Call establish a clear pattern. By highlighting the decline of privacy and establishing an alternate “home invasion” narrative in which demonic forces can access anyone with a phone, these films helped set the precedent of technophobic horror. Now that the phones, tapes, and computers of the Y2K era feel alien to many of us, there is a certain charm to how they functioned, both technologically and socially.
Another reason I find these narratives so tragic and cathartic is how far technology has progressed and how much greater its impact is now. In an era where AI seems like it’s invading every element of industry, culture, and film, responses to it often blend horror and fascination. While there is no one reason why people watch horror movies, interested parties often refer to the work of researcher Coltan Scrivner, who suggests in a 2022 NPR interview that certain viewers “seem to use horror or sort of dark themes to deal with existential problems or dark emotional states.” I must confess, this greatly reflects my approach to these films. While my own fears and anxieties are firmly rooted in mid-2020s technological development, I see my uncertainty mirrored in the protagonists of these films, and although unsettling, they offer a strange sort of comfort; we have been here before.