Some of the best horror is effective because of how the
uncanny quietly seeps into the mundane. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is masterful
in injecting the eerie into the everyday. Pulse (2001) prophesies a world of
deadly loneliness and makes the loss of connection commonplace, with characters
quietly succumbing to the “ghost in the machine” once the internet's grip takes
hold. Creepy (2016) has its antagonist distressingly abuse the social contract
of neighbours in a manner which films like Speak No Evil (2022) riffed on years
later. With Creepy, hidden rooms, sedative drugs and corpses become the order
of the day, simply due to discreet manipulation of people’s obligatory
requirements of “being nice”. Cure (1997) was released 2 years after David
Fincher’s deeply pessimistic Seven (1995). However, Kurosawa’s enigmatic
feature plunges us into a discomfort that crawls deeper under the skin. The
frostiness which inhabits Cure is illustrated in its “middle distance” visuals.
There are rarely any close-ups employed to humanise the story’s characters.
Isolation is the name of the game here. Dissociation rips through regular
people in Cure with a steeper potency than the deranged pseudo-religious crimes
of John Doe. The crimes in Seven can be isolated, pinpointed and despite the
repercussions, somewhat contained. In
Cure, it’s suggested that transgressions that occur will have no end. That what
conspires may spread like a virus, quietly destroying the unassuming nature of
its victims. This leaves them with a terrifying outcome and no idea of how such
violence came about.
Kenichi Takabe is a police detective who is balancing his
troubled private life while trying to solve a spate of violent killings. The
murders are puzzling, as each case has the perpetrators caught close to the
scene with no explanation as to why they’ve committed the murders. This is
despite freely confessing to their crimes with complete recollection of what
they did. Takabe is fighting to crack the case while also struggling to care
for his schizophrenic wife, who is slipping away from him mentally. Soon it is
discovered that each killer encountered a mysterious drifter named Mamiya.
Takabe slowly uncovers that Mamiya, despite his extreme short-term memory loss,
is the architect of these crimes. Asking simple questions and triggers actions
using the elements. Very soon, Takabe and Mamiya collide, with the mysterious
nature of Mamiya’s “mission” gradually taking the detective to breaking point.
You meet an unassuming stranger, who disarms you with a
series of innocuous questions which subconsciously loosen your inhibitions.
Moments later, you are compelled to murder someone close to you. Something you
would never consider when your civility is armoured around you. Everything you
do to the person you remember, and while you were shocked at your actions, your
intentions suggest it was always at the back of your mind. This hideously
simple yet terrifying conceit lies within Cure, a film in which its antagonist
quietly fractionates those around him through frustration, repetition, and
obfuscation. Cure toys with the idea that people believe they’re more in
control than they are. With the thin veneer of polite society as the one thing
that stops the chaos, Mamiya’s ability to easily remove that layer of civility
makes Cure terrifying. We like to believe that we have control. Even when it’s
evident that we don’t. Mamiya's actions are devastatingly simple, and the
menacing aspect stems from the fact that he doesn’t even seem to know himself
how easy it is to arm multiple timebombs. Lit fuses that are primed for
volatility because their courtesy is so neatly removed, and the last thing you
would expect to be keeping you from becoming a raging killer. By removing
people’s consideration for others, Mamiya unlocks a seething repression that
lies within the characters. Cure proposes that this violence is always within
us, and by opening them up to this brutality, it purges one's soul. They become
vessels for a blank-faced missionary.
Takabe is a classic flawed protagonist. His quiet animosity
towards his ailing wife, along with his frustrations on the case, slowly blend
him into a dark anti-hero, a cop who’s only a couple of degrees from boiling
over. The mannerisms between Takabe and Mamiya are in stark contrast, yet the
motivations of both pursuer and pursued are muddied and troubling. In the scant
confrontations between the two, there’s always the feeling that Mamiya’s quiet
manipulation will unlock Takabe’s restrained anger. Mamiya’s mission appears to
be setting people free from the restraints of society. Takabe is so tied to
society through his wife and job that he’s unable to break free. Yet Kurosawa
crafts the scenes of the duo in such a way that we’re never too sure if Mamiya
hasn’t infiltrated the fracturing detective’s mind.
Cure plays on the known unknown. Tearing at the fabric of
Japan’s well-known social norms of etiquette. Kurosawa primes everything to
unsettle, with even the hum of a washing machine becoming something which
unbalances the ambience. A familiar appliance which we use for cleaning is now
something which rattles the nervous system. While no sequences in the film are
executed as grimly as in Seven, the detached way Kurosawa situates his
characters manoeuvres Cure into becoming the Yin to Seven’s visceral Yang.
Cure’s ethereal ambiguity and dread make it tough to talk
about but absorbing to watch. Every watch gives a fan something new to chew on,
yet it never feels possible to get a full handle on the events at play. Its vaporous nature gleefully rewards you
with added strands to any theory you may have, while also obscuring any
previous certainty. On a previous watch, I was more certain about the
melancholic relationship between Takabe and his memory-depleted wife. This current
viewing left me further in doubt, with more reason to question Takabe’s
possible malevolence.
Such thoughts bring me to the film’s ambivalent finale,
which suggests a possible “passing of the torch” or a previous continuation of
events that had never diminished. That the film is happy to leave its
conclusion in the delicate hands of its viewer is a strong example of its
assuredness. It’s also the best display of the film’s ambiguous power. The
final moments remind me of another deeply disquieting thriller: Michael
Haneke’s Cache (2005). We’re given a wide shot loaded with information, but no
clear explanation of the outcome. If you rewatch both scenes, it’s possible to
pick up something deeply unsettling that may not have been considered
before. What makes it more horrific is
how easily the threat of violence is lost within a sea of the mundane. Something
insidious occurs but is soon lost within a crowd of the everyday, which is how
Kurosawa likes it.
Cure is available to buy on Blu-ray.
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