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Though Malaysia's Woo Ming Jin will likely always be best known internationally as the arthouse auteur responsible for The Tiger Factory and Woman On Fire Looks For Water, he has shown himself more than willing to also dip into populist genre fare back home in Malaysia. 2010 found footage effort Seru laid on copious amounts of blood and his next effort teams the director with popular local comedian Zizan Raja Lawak (Kl Gangster, Kapoww!!) for horror comedy Kl Zombi.Yep, the undead have arrived in Kuala Lumpur and while the very specific comedy style of Lawak will likely limit the export value of the film - comedy very seldom translates well between cultures - the first teaser for the film promises a good amount of undead...

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Though best known as an arthouse director, Malaysia's Woo Ming Jin (The Tiger Factory, Woman On Fire Looks For Water) has been exploring his more commercial urges of late. And by commercial, I mean horror.His shocker Seru hit Malaysian cinemas last year and now Woo is part of the Yomyomf series of Silent Terror shorts - a collection of four short films from directors around Asia, all unified by the fact that none of the pieces include dialogue. Woo chips in this week with a piece titled Double:a young woman lives in a bright, white house. Like clockwork, she goes through her daily routine. The young woman seems to exist alone in this cavernous and antiseptic environment, until one day, she is visited by another...

Yomyomf, the You Tube channel owned by Fast and Furious stalwart Justin Lin, is celebrating Halloween with a new horror anthology directed by some of the most interesting horror directors currently working in Asia. Lin will serve as an Executive Producer for the project alongside Anderson Le, Director of Programming for the Hawaii International Film Festival. One short will premiere each Thursday during the month, and the filmmakers include Oko Anwar (Modus Anomoli), Woo Ming Jin (The Tiger Factory), Eric Matti (Tiktik: The Aswang Chronicles) and Noboru Iguchi, who, judging from the title of his short, apparently did not get enough of filming butts when he made Zombie Ass. The gimmick for this one, titled Silent Terror, is that (surprise!) the directors were not allowed...

Much to the delight of DC co-founder Kw Low, Malaysian horror seems to be exploding all over the place lately. In fact it's as if we're coming across a new one almost every week. Next up, more cinéma vérité style chills in Seru.

Directed by prolific Malaysian filmmaker Woo Ming Jin (The Tiger Factory), Seru marks the director's first foray into the land of horror, and judging by the trailer we have for you guys below, it looks to be a good one.

As is usually the case with these kind of films, Seru tells the tale of a group of friends who unwittingly get mixed up in animist magic and superstitions that are common in the rural parts of the country. Of course they have cameras on hand so we do not miss a second of the spooky!

Seru opens in Malaysian theatres on April 28th. Thanks to DC reader Mike for the heads-up.

The explosion of independent Malaysian arthouse films reached its peak this past year when Woo Ming Jin's The Tiger Factory was selected to screen in both Cannes and Rotterdam. Woo has long been a leader in the arthouse scene, his Woman On Fire Looks For Water and The Elephant And The Sea also screening around the world to widespread acclaim while the director also kept active as a producer supporting the work of a number of other promising talents.So, after building a career as a hugely respected arthouse filmmaker, what do you do next? What comes after hitting the peak on Cannes? For Woo Ming Jin what comes next is taking a hard left turn and moving into the world of horror with Seru.Releasing on...

Soon to screen in the Pusan, Tokyo and Vancouver festivals in Inhalation, the latest short film from Malaysian expat film maker Edmund Yeo. We've covered a number of Yeo's pieces in the past and it seems as though he just keeps moving from strength to strength, finding an increasingly distinct voice as he goes. The only real question now is when does he make a feature?

Bored Mei (Susan Lee Fong Zhi, "The Tiger Factory") works on a pig farm and a butcher shop. One night she takes money from boyfriend Seng (Ernest Chong Shun Yuan, "Woman On Fire Looks For Water"), breaks his heart, and boards a ship to Japan to work there illegally. A month later she gets deported. Her ex-boyfriend Seng picks up her up from the harbour. The young ex-couple spends the night trying to come to terms with how they came to their lives of shattered dreams and forsaken love.

The Tiger Factory screening today in Directors Fortnight is being sold by Greenlight Pictures. It is a coproduction between Malaysia and Japan and involves the hopes and aspirations of the working classes and immigrants from an Asian perspective. Ping Ping is 19 and wants to go to Japan to work in a car parts company. She's under the guardianship of her aunt, Madame Tien, who shuffles her between two jobs - working in a pig farm, and cleaning dishes in a rundown restaurant. Tien is also involved in a 'baby factory' scheme, pairing young women with migrant workers and then…...

The darling of Malaysia's indie-film scene - and, honestly, the main reason anybody is aware there is any such thing - Woo Ming Jin's latest, The Tiger Factory, will be having its debut as part of the Director's Fortnight program in Cannes.

Woo specializes in intimate, slice of life stuff, and from the freshly released and English subtitled trailer it's clear that this will be no different. And, honestly, when you do what you do as well as Woo does, why would you want to change? Check the trailer below.