'Excessive' Remake: Horror, Comedy and Family in The Quiet Family and The Happiness of the Katakuris

This paper provides a comparative study of the 1998 South Korean comedy horror The Quiet Family (Jee-woon Kim) and its 2002 Japanese remake The Happiness of the Katakuris (Takashi Miike), which provide a unique case of transnational film remake. Drawing upon theories of genre and intertextuality, the article examines how the two films dramatically differ in their cinematic style and subsequent effects, while sharing a number of distinctive textual features of the so-called postmodern horror including their use of pastiche and humour, as well as subverting the iconic genre conventions to defy audience expectations. Reflecting on the contrasting family dynamics, the article also explores how the Korean original is driven by its comic irreverence about the bourgeois notion of patriarchal family, while the Japanese remake presents a fantasized version of family happiness. In addition, it addresses some of the critical issues around the recent theories of film remake by considering the industrial and institutional conditions of the films’ production, as well as the different distribution and reception contexts in relation to the different stages of the two directors’ respective careers.