Cure (1997)

 

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Screenplay: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Cast: Kôji Yakusho as Kenichi Takabe; Masato Hagiwara as Kunio Mamiya; Tsuyoshi Ujiki as Makoto Sakuma; Anna Nakagawa as Fumie Takabe; Misayo Haruki as Tomoko Hanaoka; Yoriko Dôguchi as Dr. Akiko Miyajima; Denden as Oida

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Disarmingly chirpy music plays over a man beating a female sex worker to death with a pipe, and that is the only unsubtle moment in all of Cure, the one moment which is lurid in its intentional creepiness. The rest of this film is one whose legacy is part of a slow burn which follows seemingly random killings by people oblivious to why they committed them. There is a mystery man in the centre of all this introduced early on, one no one should give a lighter to, a cigarette or even allow access to water for, someone whose vagueness in his motives become as much part of the disquieting core of Cure.

This is considered the breakthrough film for Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who had been before working since the early seventies on shorts, in the early eighties for his first few theatrical films. Pinku erotic films, a 1989 horror film Sweet Home, lost to licensing but whose videogame tie-in is held as a huge innovator for the survival horror genre, even a whole TV movie franchise called Suit Yourself or Shoot Yourself (1995-6) all came before, but Cure was a film who helped paved the direction for a working director into his future legacy. The premise is that you could find in any genre film, something of a huge virtue to Kiyoshi Kurosawa as his films, even his more drama based works, have very easy to grasp premises, but their tones are what stand out. He has even talked about his interest in genre films, so the passion was here, Cure explicitly in tribute to the American horror movies he grew up watching and able to capitalise at that time in the Japanese film industry to tackle such a film¹. In this case, it is a crime thriller with overt horror tones where, with these mysterious killings transpiring, detective Kenichi Takabe (Kôji Yakusho) finds himself trying to figure out these random killings. Cure however becomes a film which perturbs, all in spite but befitting to those films the director-writer grew up with.

Takabe's situation is a tightly winding coil. His wife, due to psychological injury, has a lack of short term memory, lost in a past before with behaviors of someone needing extensive care and therapy, such as repeatedly turning on the tumble dryer with nothing within it. His training as a police officer, as he talks of, is to bury his emotions, which becomes a challenge against a mysterious figure, later learnt to be a medical student named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) who, as the antagonist, is almost a cipher in his existence. Mamiya is a no one who seems oblivious to existence, asking the same questions over and over, until it is clear he lulls people into traps.

It is a spoiler, but early on it is explicit that hypnotic suggestion is the cause of these murders, but Cure’s tone crawls under the skin, its sedateness bristling in an increasing dread. Cure is not an elaborate film in style, exceptionally subdued as was to become Kurosawa’s trademark even with a short film like Beautiful New Bay Area Project (2013), a production which was a tribute to martial arts action fight scenes. All his films even with the supernatural are grounded in reality, even here in Cure when the gruesomeness of this scenario is not held back from. The murders, where a police office can suddenly point blank shoot another, is implicitly shown as people’s darkest emotions being unlocked, their angers or thoughts and grudges taking over as they are unaware of what is happening in their actions. This is more uncomfortable in moments, like the husband who had nothing but seemingly love for his wife he kills, and in little pieces as Kurosawa’s film becomes increasing more disturbing.

Thanks to films like Cure, Kiyoshi Kurosawa became an acclaimed auteur, beyond genre films to the likes of Wife of a Spy (2020), his thoughtful period thriller set in World War II with the same DNA from this film, where he is respected as a director who easily slides into genre and dramas with ease. Pulse (2001) was another legendary film, another breakthrough for him if Cure had not succeeded, as a supernatural ghost film which managed to be even more unsettling in its slow burn released not long afterwards. Cure is a pure horror thriller, but it stands out in how its growing sense of dread escalates. The premise, not overtly loaded in moral themes nonetheless becomes so for subtext in how it deals with neurosis and blocked violence in people if allowed to be let loose. Even the concept becomes virus like for those who get involved in the investigation, so no one is safe. When you see the growing back-story of Mamiya's life, it opens likes layers of an onion and yet will never be fully answered, only with the work of Franz Mesmer the one clear guide, a real German physician who developed the concept of "animal magnetism", an invisible natural force (Lebensmagnetismus) possessed by all living things, including humans, animals, and vegetables, which would later influence the concept of hypnotism in his own "mesmerism" acts to cure patients. It is befitting, considering the disturbing force which holds sway on people, even those who spread its influence, especially as the finale ends on a frankly supernatural centre, a Dr. Mabuse-like voice on an old phonograph cylinder, literally a voice, behind all this as we will never find the true culprit, only those who followed this chain. As was Pulse’s central ghosts, who followed rituals which were unnatural but made sense, this makes Cure scarier and more powerful. That Mamiya acts like he is helping people, when cognisant, unloading their anxieties even if it means killing people, adds to this discomfort.

The sleight of hand Kurosawa has, where his talent was on display, is when the quiet filmmaking style is toyed with; the first time, where there is an abrupt and unseen before jump cut in the editing, to a caged monkey, and Takabe experiences a horrible nightmare scenario, is where you see the mastery of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Trying to review a film in text is at times a perverse act, and here it is especially the case as, unless I gave up the entire premise and spoilers, I cannot explain more, and yet that in it would miss the point of what Cure managed, able to explain less than what the film wishes to never disclose to the audience. The best thing to do is, simply, to watch Cure, as even with all the plot details explained, this is one of those cases where plot details are meaningless explained out of context, where the tone and what is implicit is where the talent of the film’s craft, and when it buries itself in one’s flesh, is felt as a dread.

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1) Embrace the role of chance in filmmaking, says Qumra Master Kiyoshi Kurosawa, published for the Doha Film Institute on March 29th 2020.