Cure (1997)

Director:

Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Writers:

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (novel)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa (screenplay)

Release Date:

8 July 2001 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Horror | Thriller

Tagline:

Madness. Terror. Murder.

Plot:

A wave of gruesome murders is sweeping Tokyo. The only connection is a bloody X carved into the neck of each of the victims...

Plot Keywords:

Murder | Tokyo Japan | Philosophy | Mystic | Psychological Drama

Awards:

9 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Kôji Yakusho	...	Kenichi Takabe
Masato Hagiwara	...	Kunio Mamiya
Tsuyoshi Ujiki	...	Makoto Sakuma
Anna Nakagawa	...	Fumie Takabe
Yoriko Douguchi	...	Dr. Akiko Miyajima
Yukijirô Hotaru	...	Ichiro Kuwano
Denden	...	Oida
Ren Ôsugi	...	Fujiwara
Masahiro Toda	...	Tôru Hanaoka
Misayo Haruki	...	Tomoko Hanaoka
Shun Nakayama	...	Kimura
Akira Otaka	...	Yasukawa
Shôgo Suzuki	...	Tamura
Toshi Kato	...	Psychiatrist
Hajime Tanimoto	...	Takabe no shachô

Also Known As:

Cure (International: English title)
Kyua (Japan) (alternative title)
The Cure (UK)

Runtime:

111 min | Taiwan:115 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

France:-12 | South Korea:15 (DVD rating)

Company:

Code Red

Goofs:

Continuity: When the detective first goes to Mamiya's apartment, the landlord tells him he has not seen Mamiya for six months. Yet, when the detective enters the dark, long deserted apartment, the "lab" animals are still perfectly healthy. No explanation is offered as to how they survived with their owner gone for so long.

Movie Connections:

References The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Possibly the spookiest movie I have ever seen.

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.