Part of the blame goes to the Byzantine marketing strategies employed by companies like Omega Project, which have included a bewildering, ensnaring web of sequels and prequels, resonantly similar titles, a revival of the co-feature (creating another kind of kinship between films), and innovative exploitation of spin-offs and hype (websites, cell-phone dial-up entertainment, games, TV serials, manga adaptations, even amusement parks). Omega even produced a Korean remake of The Ring.
Are they spreading the same media “virus” that sucks in (and, uh, kills) unsuspecting teenagers in The Ring movies themselves? Call them a virus, but, with the Asian film industry bowed by Hollywood, Omega and other perpetrators of the new Japanese horror seem intent to reinvent the Asian cinematic marketplace.
Thus, in the spirit of The Ring’s “link of fear,” we present our own maddeningly meticulous, but oh so ingeniously designed, charts to open this special issue on the new Japanese horror. Once you enter the flow, you’ll know what we mean — but then how else to map the conspiratorial interrelationships that constitute a new movement: a spiraling descent into an obsession with the unspeakable?
Click on the
title to enlarge. 
