Cure

Cure, a Japanese psychological mystery-horror film

It was fantastic. It's one of the eeriest movies I have seen in a while. Then again, Japanese movies know how to do that.

And this isn't just a crime thriller, but a horror movie. The murderer in the film uses hypnosis to make people commit murder, and the murderer toys with the detective effectively. He pretends to have memory loss, so whenever you ask him a question, he will ask you a question, then moments later ask you again and again. He acts like he's got the mind of a curious child. In some way, he is not different from cult leader Charles Manson, who was notoriously one of the evilest and most high-profile men in history, who is responsible for the brutal murder of Shannon Tate and her friends, and yet, he hasn't killed anyone for what we know but instead told others to do his dirty work.

And it makes you mad as well, as he gets on your nerves. But the thing is, he sounds confused and almost like a lost child. There is one creepy scene where the murderer hides in a dark room, and the detective tries to find him while the murderer asks who he is and why why why questions and then repeats the question as if he forgot, and the detective gets angrier and angrier trying to find him.

The acting in this movie is fan-freaking-tastic. I don’t know how to explain it, but it always sounds natural and raw whenever Japanese actors yell.

There's barely a score in the movie, but the sound is enhanced to the max, leaving an uneasy atmosphere.

I know, not the usual Halloween movie, but it is psychological and horrific.

A haunting serial killer film. It's style is much like Seven, but is somewhat more disturbing because it doesn't offer any easy answers, but rather raises several interesting questions. Ones that leave you thinking long after the credits roll.

Cure is a mix of crime, horror, and psychological tension that explores themes like control, identity, and the thin line between sanity and madness. The use of occult influences adds an eerie touch, and its ambiguous ending gives you a lot to think about. Its complex storytelling makes it a standout in psychological horror and a film that stays with you long after you’ve watched it.

What’s strange about Cure is its hypnotic quality—it feels almost impossible to shake off. No matter how many times I’ve watched it, I can never seem to remember how it actually ends.

Subtle and nuanced, Cures ability to give you all the pieces and ask you to come up with your own outcome will infuriate some and fascinate others. Falling into the latter camp, Cure will be one that I will now muse on and Google until I can line all the dots up and come to my own satisfying conclusion. It's not punchy, but if you tap into the everpresent, droning dread and sinister, muted climax, Cure is a great Seven and Zodiac adjacent thriller that you should promptly wipe from your backlog.

Very grim and bleak in an ugly and real way despite what would usually be a fantastical or campy plot element. The murders are an extension of societal rot, of people who repress so much they don’t feel allowed or able to express until it either hollows them out or causes them to burst. By establishing that each hypnosis plays off a buried desire at the core of the person, the film keeps the murders horrific, stark in their simple, unsettlingly mundane presentation. Mamiya- charismatically and appropriately hypnotically performed to draw you in when you want to pull away- is a nightmare because he has what they lack: peace of mind. No worries. And Yakusho as Takebe is dynamic and explosive, really hooking you in for every step of his decline. Undeniably a masterpiece, it doesn’t quite hit my heart as much as it does my brain. I didn’t fully emotionally connect with it, so much as I admired its mechanisms. But it’s well worth the watch. You won’t look away.

The way everything is so normal for the victims in this movie is both unsettling and fitting. The slow descent the main character falls into is also well done, and the ending is so creepy. Highly recommend to people who enjoy unconventional movies.

When he has cured the patient, it is the shaman who must give something in exchange. Having made good the body, he must make good the debt. Or the Japanese story of the woman who lets the girl drown because, she says, if she saves her life, the child will owe her such an obligation it will be unbearable.
Our entire psychology fails before these ancestral rules.
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For the Japanese, the most commonplace individual and the most
mundane object are both singular, even in their repetition. The problem is not to be different. For us, by contrast, that is an obligation. But there isn't difference for everyone, just as there isn't a meaning for every word (the characteristic of meaning is that not everything has it). This is how everyone ends up alone, dispossessed of both their singularity and their difference.
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Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories V: 2000-2004

Inexplicable murders plague a Japanese town, conspicuous not just in their brutish commonality (each victim is finished in the same way: a broad X carved into their neck) but in the immediate presence and confused confession of a guilty party. The evidence doesn't lie - these men and women clearly committed the crime - but the striking similarities and a complete lack of motive or hesitation suggest something larger at work. Alongside an obsessive, emotionally distant police detective, we dig for clues, grow frustrated, luck into a break and suddenly find ourselves right in the middle of something that's beyond our control.

Exploring the tricky theme of impulsive, ritualistic violence as a sort of viral social disorder, Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) toys with some heavy stuff in Cure. It's a bold experiment that doesn't always work. The setup of the first hour, for example, is awfully slow and disconnected, considering the amount of bloody murder going down. Once we edge nearer to the cause of this macabre work, though, things get interesting, fast. It's horror in both the traditional sense and a more modern one; a gory hunt for an unhinged mastermind (of sorts) with startling jumps and plenty of body bags, but also a haunting vision of madness as an uncontrollable plague, an invisible killer that moves from one host to the next. An imperfect but effective experiment, particularly as the screen betrays our trust in the third act.

Fits right in with movies like _Se7en_ and _Silence of the Lambs_. It has a bleak tone, some interesting cinematography and good attention to detail when it comes to sound design. I love the concepts its delving into, exploring the nature of malaise and evil. However, much like the two aforementioned films, I have trouble taking a lot of its plot seriously, because the way it portrays psychosis feels too sensationalized and cheesy for something that tries to be this realistic crime drama. It's probably more effective for people who are into true crime and that type of silly shit, because for me the emotional moments don't pack as much punch. I think it needed a lot more formalism and surrealism for it to work, or simply embrace the pulpy nature of it all. Still, the acting and technical execution are most definitely there, it has some really sharp editing choices in particular. Overall, I'm just glad we've moved on from doing crime movies like this, because this type of serial killer movie hasn't aged particularly well. Give me a movie like _Zodiac_ over this any day.

6/10