Film

Hiruko the Goblin

A 1991 Japanese horror-comedy from director Shioh Saitoh that treats demonic invasion with gleeful absurdity. A goblin harvests student heads to build spider-demon hybrids at a school built atop a hell-gate. It's silly and gory in equal measure, pitched somewhere between a creature feature and a joke you're not entirely sure is funny. For anyone who likes their horror unserious and their gore comedic.

TMDb rating3.2

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Evil Dead II1987

Bruce Campbell fights supernatural forces with chainsaw-wielding bravado while the film itself refuses to stay in one tonal lane. Wildly inventive gore-slapstick that proves horror and comedy aren't opposites.

But The relentless mugging can exhaust you. It demands you stay with the joke for ninety minutes without breathing room.

Evil Dead II poster

Gremlins1984

A creature feature that's genuinely funny without betraying its own stakes. Mischievous monsters wreak havoc through small-town America with wit and practical effect imagination that feels alive.

But The rules governing the gremlins' behaviour feel arbitrary. Some sequences sag when they should snap.

Gremlins poster

Tremors1990

A perfect-pitch comedy-horror about underground worm creatures attacking a desert town. Smart, funny, and endlessly inventive, treating B-movie ingredients with genuine affection and craft.

But If you need scares, you won't find them. The tone never tips toward genuine threat.

Tremors poster

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Kwaidan1965

Both draw on Japanese folk-horror and treat the supernatural as part of the landscape rather than an intrusion. But where Hiruko is joyfully anarchic, Kwaidan is meditative—the inverse register of the same mythological voice.

Masaki Kobayashi's anthology of Japanese ghost stories rendered in painterly colour and theatrical space. Pure atmosphere—no plot momentum, all dread and beauty. One of cinema's strangest, most gorgeous films.

But It moves at a funeral pace and requires sitting with mood instead of narrative. The stories are folk-tales, not arcs; some find them dull.

Kwaidan poster
More like this (6)

Night of the Creeps1986

A cheerfully gory pastiche of every horror subgenre that winks without winking. Slug-creatures, zombies, and a detective with a dead girlfriend—played entirely sincere, which makes it funnier.

But The dated special effects are part of the appeal if you're into that, but they can feel lazy if you're not. Tone shifts can feel unmoored.

Night of the Creeps poster

Possession1981

Andrzej Żuławski's visionary Polish horror is genuinely unhinged—operatic, grotesque, marriage-thriller filtered through cosmic body-horror. Never boring, wildly ambitious, occasionally inexplicable in the best way.

But It's bleak and suffocating in ways that have nothing to do with monsters. The relationship dynamics are abusive and the film doesn't distance itself from that.

Possession poster

House1977

A Japanese haunted-house film that surrenders to pure visual fantasy instead of logic. Surreal, experimental, shot through with darkly comic moments, it treats the building itself as the real star.

But The plot barely exists and the English-language cut has terrible dubbing. It's an experience more than a story, which won't work for everyone.

House poster

The Wailing2016

A South Korean mystery-horror that layers folk-religious dread with genuine uncertainty about who or what is actually evil. Masterfully built tension that earns every scare.

But It's a slow burn that requires patience, and the final act divides people sharply. At 156 minutes, it's a commitment.

The Wailing poster

The Super Inframan1975

A Hong Kong superhero film where a cyborg fighter battles a demon-woman and her spider-creature minions in earnest, deliberately artificial sets. Pure colourful chaos from director Hua Shan.

But The action choreography is clunky and the sets look explicitly painted. Authenticity is not the goal and that's not for everyone.

The Super Inframan poster

The Happiness of the Katakuris2002

Both are Japanese films that treat death and monsters as occasions for comedy and spectacle. Miike and Saitoh both refuse the Western horror rulebook of sustained dread—they want you to laugh at the gore and enjoy the strangeness.

Takashi Miike's musical comedy-horror about a family running a roadside inn where guests keep dying. It pivots between slapstick, stop-motion musical numbers, and genuine pathos without warning. Unhinged and weirdly moving.

But The tonal whiplash will alienate viewers who want consistency. There are lengthy stop-motion musical sequences that serve no plot function.

The Happiness of the Katakuris poster

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