The Cinematheque

“[A] superior film … A Zodiac-like detective investigation churned through the hallways of Japanese horror and the dungeons of German Expressionism.”

Lawrence Garcia, The Georgia Straight

Every decade or so, Kurosawa Kiyoshi returns to the genre premise of his breakout film Cure, which sets in opposition two figures: a detective and an enigma, each maladjusted to both professional and personal life. In ways paranoid and legitimate, comic and disturbing, ex-cop Koichi (Nishijima Hidetoshi, Drive My Car) and next-door neighbour Nishino, both married and adopting second careers, antagonize one another with an uncomfortable pattern of driveway hellos, dinner-party small talk, and other suburban hostilities. Koichi’s obsessive inquiries—into Nishino’s lack of social graces, and the lack of a clear suspect in the cold case he’s sleuthing in his spare time—bleed together in a way that plays with Koichi’s (and our own) suspension of disbelief, until the film descends into something that defeats mere psychological profiling. Kurosawa never flinches, injecting the dark lucidity of a fairy tale into a film otherwise led by pure suggestion.

In Japanese with English subtitles

“A vision of absolute evil that somehow becomes more disquieting and suggestive as it becomes more obvious and literal.”

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, The A.V. Club

“Creepy certainly works like a horror movie, but it also has the conundrums of a detective story, the emotional currents of a domestic drama, and the quickening pulse of a psychological thriller, a combination that creates a kind of destabilization.”

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“Never less than compelling, thanks to Kurosawa’s awareness of the widescreen frame and his tensile wilding of classical mise-en-scène … Makes unshowy, meaningful use of shadowplay and background detail, moving back and forth from light to dark.”

Nick Pinkerton, Sight and Sound