Cure (1997) Modern Horror Masterpiece about Evil’s absolute power to indoctrinate

In 1999, Hideo Nakata’s gloomy horror masterwork, Ring, popularised a wave of horror films from Japan that took the world by storm under the banner of J-Horror. J-Horror, like any genre or movement, has its line-up of standards and tropes, with the harsh digital look of muted Green, Grey and Black and an apocalyptic nihilism born from the uncertainty of the economic crash that claimed the 1990s as the “lost decade”. Of more direct stock, there was the ubiquitous long black hair, a fear of technology and children turned into horrific apparitions as a mode of subtextual, intergenerational guilt. All that is true, and they also happen to rank among the creepiest films ever made. Yet before all of that was Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, a film long unavailable in the UK despite its massive reputation and a swarm of high-profile fans.

Ostensibly a murder mystery, Cure cuts far deeper than its affiliation to that genre suggests. This spate of graphic murders are unrelated yet they share an M.O. – a group of perfectly sane people kill someone in their life with a frightening, detached lucidity and carve a cross into their chest of their victim. They know they killed someone but none can give a compelling reason why – it just felt like “the right thing to do”. When a suspect is cornered, it is a twenty-something man with an inability to make new memories or remember his past, as the case develops it is established that he is a genius of hypnotism and he motivated each and every one of these bloody murders. Through this, Cure deconstructs the id, invokes occultism and explores the work of Franz Mesmer (the etymological source of the word ‘mesmerise’).

NCIS this is not.

Coincidentally, mesmerising is the exact word I would use to describe the film, a vital word I would use to describe this oppressive atmosphere. Kurosawa establishes this aura through those compressed digital visuals, greys and the ambiguity of what may be hiding in dark corners, something he would later go on to perfect in Pulse (2001). The introduction of hypnotism as a means for evil (long before Jordan Peele’s Get Out) is what makes all those constituent parts sing. The idea that your mind has been compromised and has been bent to someone else’s will is a terrifying notion, and effortly ensures the piece is consistently unreliable. Can we believe a single thing that we are seeing? Whatsmore, the horror concept of “no-reason” is on proud display here. Kurosawa achieves all of this through elliptical editing, removing key moments of storytelling or introducing a non-linear obscurity, abrupt and unsentimental violence. The significance of crosses and dripping water alongside the significance of recurring flashing lights ensure that Cure embeds itself deep under your skin.

Cure’s status as a preeminent J-Horror title may set some up for disappointment. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s genre work is far more still and slow in its build-up, there are no moments like Sadako crawling through the TV or the terrifying denizens of Ju-On. The equivalent marquee scenes here are built upon gestures and patterns – asking questions over and over and manipulating light are the chosen tools of terror. Just like Get Out turned rotating a spoon around a teacup into a source of abject horror, Kurosawa does the same for lighting a cigarette. Now, I am fully aware that on paper that doesn’t really sound like much but seeing what is wrought by such small motions, it turns the unassuming Masato Hagiwara into the single most intimidating icon of the latest age of Japanese horror. The simple question of ‘who are you?’ has skin-crawling ramifications, especially when it is delivered in such a nonchalant, blasé way – his evil is not grandiose but subtle and insidious.

The investigator of these horrific murders is Koji Yakusho, who, as the film begins, is a patient detective who merely wants to solve this spate of crimes so he can take his wife on holiday, but like Brad Pitt in Se7en, his is a story where the investigation is a losing battle with his own sanity the victim. Detective Takabe (Yakusho) has visions of death and that horrible monkey statuette in a descent into psychological hell that scratches away at the inner walls of his mind until it asks us why the film is called Cure. Who is in need of this titular remedy and what is it?

This is psychological horror at its finest, melding the ideas behind Larry Cohen’s 1976 film, God Told me To crossed with the final scene of John Carpenter’s ever-underappreciated In the Mouth of Madness, turning Kurosawa’s film into the ultimate display of evil’s absolute power to indoctrinate. There’s a reason why Bong Hoon-Jo thinks this is one of the best films ever made.

Thanks for reading our review of Cure

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