31 Days of Halloween: Day 12

Cure (1997) Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Up until now I have only briefly touched on the quality of the scares in the horror films I have watched.  That is because I don't find any of the previously discussed films to be actually scary.  This seems to be an odd irony of horror film buffs in general; very few of them seem to actually be scared by movies.  I often hear people who love horror movies say, "movies don't scare me," and so on.  On the one hand, this does make sense.  Why would you watch something that you find unpleasant?  But at the same time, I'm always searching for a movie that will actually spook me.  When watching a horror film for the first time, I always do it alone, at night, with the lights off.  It needs to be the scariest environment possible.  A friend once asked me why I do that, to which I responded, "it's like eating spicy food."  I think that makes sense.

With all of that said, there is one sub-genre that has been repeatedly remarked by folks across the internet as the one that is actually scary.  That is, Asian horror films (more specifically, East Asian).  It's difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is, but Asian film directors have a tendency to create films that are truly horrifying.  The films of this region tend to be more psychological than Western horror films, and even when ghosts and gore is used, its effect still comes from a psychological angle.  The result, are movies that don't so much as make you scream, but instead leave you shivering.  Asian films, unlike Western horror films, don't really use jump scares, the oh-so-easy way to get a reaction from an audience.  Quiet followed by a loud noise.  Any dunce with a camera can do that. 

J-Horror

The Japanese in particular have received much attention for their horror films, mostly due to the American remakes of Ringu (1998) and Ju-on: The Grudge (2002).  And I chose to begin my week of Asian horror with a film by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira Kurosawa). 

Starting in the 1960s, the Japanese film industry began to enter a free fall, with the rise of television leading to a sharp decline in movie theater attendance.  The industry hit rock bottom in the late 1980s, with only a few of the major studios managing to stay in business.  Then in the 1990s, the industry began to have a sort of rebirth.  Even with the economic rescission going on, the new independent industry that emerged thanks to video tape and other means, brought about a new breed of young filmmakers.  Some of these directors include: Takeshi Kitano, Hirokazu Koreeda, Takashi Miike, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa.  Keep in mind that I'm only discussing live action here, and not the many great anime directors that were also working at this time.  In addition to the rebirth of the Yakuza genre with Kitano, Japanese horror films grew increasingly more popular. 

During the summers of both Japan and Korea, horror films and shows screen constantly on television because when one is scared, their body temperature decreases.  A nice comfy way to deal with the heat.  Even before television, however, the Japanese have had a knack for creating terrifying monsters.  Take for example, Oshiroibaba.  According to IO9, this demon woman is:

an old crone that goes around asking girls if they'd like to try some of her face powder, like the world's creepiest Avon lady. Taking make-up from strangers is bad idea in general, and taking it from old ladies is even dumber, because the Oshirobaba's powder makes your face fall off.

This is what she looks like:

Then there is the now popular Onryō, or vengeful spirit.  They have existed in Japanese folklore for more than a thousand years, but became popular in the mainstream after one was featured in The Ring (2002), as the little girl with long black hair.  I was actually an Onryō for Halloween one year.

This is what I looked like:

Ladies?

Another interesting quality of the Japanese film industry of the 1990s, is how many of the filmmakers that were emerging returned to a more "traditional" form of filmmaking.  Unlike Western filmmakers in the early 20th century, who saw film as a new form of photography, the Japanese saw it as a new form of theater.  As such, the film tradition of Japan evolved from a presentational style, rather than a representational one.  Japanese theater such as Kabuki, Bunraku, and Noh, have a deliberately staged quality to them.  There is no effort to hide stagehands, or other elements that indicate to the audience that what they are seeing is being constructed before them, and is not reality. 

This translated into films in many different ways.  Notable examples include the films of Ozu and Mizoguchi, who each have a "traditional" aesthetic.  The filmmakers of the 1990s returned to this idea of tradition in many different forms.  From Kitano's still camera to Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke (1997) focusing on the primitive people vs. the industrialized ones.  One explanation for this return to the traditional may have been the recession.  Frustrated with the negative side-effects of Western capitalism, many Japanese wanted to return to their roots.

In terms of horror, one significant event of the decade was the Tokyo subway sarin attack.  In 1995, sarin was released in the Subway system, killing 13 people.  Sarin is both colorless and odorless, and the attack created much hysteria in the nation.  Which brings us to Cure.

Cure

Cure follows a detective named Takabe, who is investigating a strange string of murders that are connected by the fact that each of the victims has an "X" carved into their throat and chest.  However, the strange part is each of the murderers has been found at the scene of the crime, and fully confessed to it, but without any memory of certain details.  How are these crimes actually connected then? 

The way in which the sarin gas relates is that even though the bad guy/monster is revealed early in the film, his motives and means of committing his crimes are never fully explained.  It is an "invisible" mystery.  The murders come from seemingly nowhere.

Cure is a rather ingenious film, and Kurosawa practices a laudable level of patience in telling his story.  At first the film plays like a straight mystery thriller.  Nothing special.  Feels and looks like Se7en (1995) or The Silence of the Lambs (1991).  Meaning, it is not actually a horror film, but stands on the blurred in-between area of thriller and horror.  When the monster is revealed early in the film, I was frankly disappointed.  "So much for the mystery," I thought.  Then about 2/3 of the way through the movie Takabe and a psychiatrist are watching an old film on a television screen, and I realized that I was completely terrified.  What was it along the way that scared me so much?

The horror takes shape gradually over the course of the narrative, and there are never any loud or extravagant set-pieces.  The camera always keeps its distance from the action, especially the murders, and presents most of what's on screen in a rather matter of fact way.  Kurosawa frequently uses subtle long takes, with gentle camera movement in a way so that something small in the background grabs our interest, but there is never any bombastic indication that something serious is happening. 

For example, one shot has Takabe in the foreground thinking to himself, while a character behind him walks into his room and turns on a light.  Something is revealed with this light, but there is no music cue to indicate the reveal.  It just happens.  The effect is rather than a sudden jolt in our system, something instead slowly creeps up within us, and the feeling takes a long time to go away.

By the film's conclusion I felt completely creeped out, but I had almost no idea as to why.  There is nothing to be explicitly scared of in Cure.  There is no Bogey Man, so to speak.  Yes, there is a crazy guy in the movie, but it is not really him that scares the audience.  After watching Cure I went to bed and every small sound in my apartment felt in my mind like something that was going to get me.  What exactly was going to get me?  I don't know.  Like the sarin, the horror can't be seen, it can only be felt.  The horror in Cure is not a man, but an idea.