Asian Horror Spotlight: House of Sayuri (2024) — A Haunting Return to Form for Koji Shiraishi

Director Koji Shiraishi transforms domestic dread into a haunting revenge tale in House of Sayuri.

Koji Shiraishi’s House of Sayuri Delivers a Gut-Wrenching, Ghost-Fueled Return to Form

We’re diving into our annual look at Asian horror cinema — the films from the last year (and bleeding into 2025) that are shaping the global genre conversation. And you can’t start that discussion without Japan. This time, it’s Koji Shiraishi’s House of Sayuri — a gut-wrenching, surreal, and unexpectedly feral ghost story that reminds us why Japanese horror still sets the global standard for dread.

Shiraishi isn’t new to the game. You know his work — Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman (2007), Occult (2009), Grotesque (2009). The man has built a reputation for psychological rot and brutal honesty, and House of Sayuri is no exception.

The setup is deceptively simple: a family moves into a house that everyone else in town knows better than to touch. Two entities inhabit the space — a sinister young girl and a violent, hulking presence tied to her in ways the family can’t yet understand. From the moment they step inside, everything begins to unravel: sickness, paranoia, death. There’s no slow burn here. The curse hits fast.

Then — in true Shiraishi fashion — the film flips the table. What starts as a classic J-horror meditation on grief and guilt morphs into a wild, revenge-fueled third act led by the family’s grandmother. It’s part domestic horror, part manga action fever dream, and somehow it all works.

Shiraishi uses the home like a living organism — twisting corridors, creaking stairs, and those suffocating angles that Japanese filmmakers always seem to turn into nightmares. You feel every shadow, every corner. And when the violence hits, it’s sharp, intimate, and unrelenting — the kind that leaves you wincing and muttering, “they really went for it.”

There’s a kill sequence here that rivals anything from this year’s festival circuit — and considering the obsession filmmakers seem to have lately with jugular-based knife kills, House of Sayuri might be leading that charge.

But what’s most interesting about watching this film — and really, all modern Japanese horror right now — is how it exists in conversation with its own cinematic legacy. It’s like early hip-hop sampling James Brown: a generation remixing the bones of what came before while carving out its own identity. Shiraishi isn’t paying homage — he’s evolving the language.

It’s dread with lineage. A house with history. A director who still knows how to twist your stomach.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

House of Sayuri is available to stream now in Japan, with international releases expected in early 2025.