Slideshow
CURE
キュア
Japan, 1997
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
With Kōji Yakusho, Masato Hagiwara, Tsuyoshi Ujiki, Anna Nakagawa
Approx. 112 min. 35mm print courtesy Japan Foundation.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s spellbinding international breakthrough established him as one of the leaders of the emerging new wave of Japanese horror while pushing the genre into uncharted realms of philosophical and existential exploration. A string of shocking, seemingly unmotivated murders — each committed by a different person yet bearing the same grisly hallmarks — leads Detective Kenichi Takabe (Kōji Yakusho) into a labyrinthine investigation to discover what connects them, and into a disturbing game of cat and mouse with an enigmatic amnesiac (Masato Hagiwara) who may be evil incarnate. Awash in a mood of hushed, hypnotic dread, CURE is a tour de force of psychological tension and a hallucinatory journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind.
Reviews
“Gradually immerses you into its subtle but undeniably ominous atmosphere once you go along with its rather twisty journey into darkness, and you will find yourself chilled much more than expected around the movie's final shot.”
– RogerEbert.com