Sunday, August 4, 2024

Cure (1997)

IMDb plot summary: A frustrated detective deals with the case of several gruesome murders committed by people who have no recollection of what they've done.
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Starring Masato Hagiwara, Koji Yakusho, and Tsuyoshi Ujiki.

Cure is a Japanese psychological horror film about a policeman trying to solve a bizarre series of crimes in which the murderers seem to attack out of nowhere and carve an "X" into their victims' bodies. The answer gets weirder and weirder the more they dig into it. Like a lot of crime movies, this drags for me around the more procedural bits of the story, but the ultimate answer and the reveals are delightfully unsettling, and it ends on a pretty perfect note. Those dragging moments get to me enough, though, that I may like it better as a concept than as an actual movie. I enjoyed rereading the Wikipedia article summarizing the story maybe more than watching the film, as the slowed pacing wasn't an issue for me. Worth a watch for its fun and creative concepts, but it may be an easier sell for folks who are already going to like the procedural aspects of a police drama to begin with.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Cure > Love Exposure
Cure < The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Cure > Kajaki
Cure < Batman Returns
Cure > Air
Cure < The Song of Lunch
Cure < The Zone of Interest
Cure < The Sound of Music
Cure > Florence Foster Jenkins
Cure > Westfront 1918
Cure < Akira
Cure > Goosebumps
Final spot: #1337 out of 3928, or 66%.

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