Cure

The only time I can recall being as spooked by a film was when my parents took me to see "Hangover Square" - a gothic Jack the Ripper thriller - when I was 8 years old. I guess they couldn't find a baby-sitter. That took me about a year to get over, a low-key, all-too-realistic chiller about the banality of insanity.

"Cure" is such a perfect depiction of madness that just about every shot could be framed & hung in a gallery. You can't analyze this one, it doesn't follow a cartesian line of logic; nor does it blast you with halloweenish surprises in the style of Elm Street & its knock-offs. This has far deeper & subtler impact. I found as I relaxed into this film that images of recurring dreams & nightmares I've had since childhood arose & blended into what I was watching. Can't get much creepier than that.

That said, the images & emotions that this film evokes are on a very high level of poetic art. One of the most impressive elements of "Cure" is the director's ability to convey the magnetic manipulative appeal of Mamiya - surely one of the scariest things in real life & very difficult to convincingly convey on screen.

This film is like a Japanese "mate" to Se7en, although in many ways I think it's superior. The ending is rather enigmatic but if the implications are as I see them (no spoilers) then it is the ending I wish Se7en had gone for. Like many Japanese films I've seen, I get the impression that I'm missing things (cultural outlooks, social relationships) that the Japanese must see. But even knowing that it was a very disturbing film and the director knows how to add to it. It's an extremely dark film (in many ways) and near the end it sounded like something the entire movie was "breathing", like a demon close to your ear. A very eerie effect. Worth seeing.

I think it is important to distinguish Cure from the avalanche of white-face-ghost-girl Japanese horror flicks that followed in Ringu's wake. Purely because it's a different beast and lumping it in a convenient J-horror niche is doing it a disservice. I won't go into plot specifics because it's only a skeleton for Kurosawa to hang his atmospherics. That said, I can understand the complaint many viewers seem to share ("man, it doesn't make sense") but without having any claims on solving Cure's riddle, I'm satisfied with letting wash over me, one watch at a time.

Kurosawa wisely doesn't attempt to explain his plot. He's content to lift the veil just enough for us to sneak a glimpse in before he disorients again. The plot slowly builds through little tokens that are never followed by an orchestral crescento to signal their arrival. They just happen. A small photo in a book, muffled words on a phonogram, an old video, the ramblings of an amnesiac, theories on 18th century Austrian doctors. In the course of the film, everything seems to be coming together only to remain elusive in the end. In that aspect I find Cure to be closer to Last Year at Marienbad than your average Ringu clone. It's not about making sense, it's about pushing limits within which you can. It's about soaking in the impression it makes. When muffled words come through a phonogram, they're more incoherent ramblings than a telegraphed plot solution; but they contribute just as well to the overarching feel. This elliptic mentality is abetted by Kurosawa's choice of a slow, deliberate pace and many long shots, entire scenes covered without any cuts. The gritty and rundown aspect of Tokyo is photographed like a more naturalistic version of David Fincher's work and does the job well.

It's my impression that a surrealist air hovers above and at the heart of Cure, at times reminiscent of a more languid version of Lynch. It is undoubtedly a horror movie so don't be put off by my Resnais comparison, but it's as much bleak as it is subtle and leaves enough to the mind's eye to make you carry it out with you.

This movie has a simple premise and a simple story that is nevertheless explored in an incredibly delicate and talented way. Kiyoshi Kurosawa is an extremely talented individual and perhaps the only writer/director who is able to simultaneously scare and mentally challenge me at the same time (note that very few are capable of doing one or the other). Although the writing is very good (story and dialogue), Kurosawa's real strength is his ability to represent visually the progressive denouement of his story. He rather subtly show you and let your imagination and intellect figure it out for you than to spell out bluntly what the straightforward storyline should be. It does not, however, get to the point of chaotic untidiness or pointlessness, for he is able to guide you slowly along the way (I would then say that he is slightly easier to follow than David Lynch is, but then again who is not). He uses here a strikingly effective technique where he shows you a room from one angle and later lets you discover that room more and more as the movie advances. His camera shots are always well planned and he is thus able to draw you in the movie bit by bit-quite an eerie sensation.

The acting is generally good and believable. The camera-work is a stand out.

There are many scenes where you will be able to appreciate this superior artistic and technical quality. The music is good and tenseful, but it is sparse and what is used instead is a contrast of minimalist and grossly amplified everyday sounds that vibrate through the movie. When there is no sound, you often find yourself holding your breath. This is not used strictly as a ploy, but rather creates a mood and further pulls you in the general atmosphere of the movie. Most of all, again, the directing is top notch. The pace which is slow enough for you to have the time to both think and be afraid is not slow enough that it gets boring, although you should not expect a North American expeditious run through the film. Everything is there, but it comes to you in slow, meticulously chosen dosage. Only, at the end can you truly see the masterpiece that has been drawn stroke by stroke in front of you.

One of the reason this movie actually works is that it is designed to play with your mind and trigger fear and reaction based not only on emotion, but on reason. People are dying, but everything is calm, rational. The tone and story are pretty much realistic and, at the end of the experience, you may feel beyond your volitional control that you are actually convinced of the "strange" things in the movie. Hopefully this feeling will subside...

In the wake of the sarin-gas attack mounted by the Aum Shinrikyo cult on the Tokyo subway system in 1995, horror films enjoyed a sudden spurt of popularity in Japan. Many of the films focus on hypnosis or media-induced violence, the fragile normalcy of modern life, and grisly deeds committed by seemingly ordinary citizens. This unnerving 1997 thriller, which seems like a direct response to the Aum Shinrikyo incident, offers a glimpse of how our own national cinema may absorb the blow of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A rash of senseless murders wracks Tokyo; the victims have deep X-shaped gashes across their throats, and the killers (often their loved ones) are found in a daze. The only connection appears to be a mysterious drifter (Masato Hagiwara) who gets into random strangers' heads with a single, oft-repeated question: "Who are you?" What makes this subtle, quiet shocker so unsettling is the idea that everyone has secret resentments that render him or her hypnotically pliable--that everyone harbors some glimmer of murderous rage that can be exploited, whether by a drifter or by religious extremists. The writer-director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a prolific Japanese filmmaker who's developing a large cult following here, heightens the unease with buzzing soundtrack noise and eerie long takes that leave us consistently unprepared for the violence to come. And the last sequence will leave people arguing--it requires close attention, culminating in an ending even more disturbing in its implications than the conclusion of SEVEN.