One of my favourite horrors from these October Challenges was “Pulse” (2001). A smart and emotionally deep ghost story that stuck with me a long time after I watched it. When I see a film like that I always check out the director and look for other movies. In this case the director was Kiyoshi Kurosawa and his most famous horror was actually a film called “Cure” from 1997. It’s described as a Neo-Noir horror so I was sold on it right away. Cure is written and directed by Kurosawa, with Tokushô Kikumura providing cinematography and Gary Ashiya providing the score. The movie stars Kōji Yakusho, with support from Masato Hagiwara, Tsuyoshi Ujiki, Anna Nakagawa, Yoriko Dōguchi and Yukijirō Hotaru.
“Kenichi Takabe” (Yakusho), is a Tokyo Metropolitan Police detective tasked with the investigation of a bizarre series of violent killings by seemingly random perpetrators. All of which seem to have no motivation for the killings and Takabe begins to suspect hypnotism my be involved. He discovers each person had a meeting with a mysterious man with no memory called “Mamiya” (Masato Hagiwara). After taking him into custody he tries to get to the bottom of who this man is; how he does what he does and; why he does it. But as Mamiya takes a special interest in Takabe things become more complicated.
Of Human Nature
This is a slow burn psychological horror with neo-noir leanings. Indeed it is so slow burn and psychological that sometimes I forgot it was a horror. But that’s not a bad thing, because it works. The story isn’t complex, but is very introspective and philosophical. The question Mamiya keeps asking people is “Who are you?”, but he is not asking for names. That is the core of this story. When investigating hypnotism, Takabe is reminded that you cannot hypnotize people to do things that are outside of their nature. So these murders are not entirely outside of what the murderers are capable of, they just never did it before. It is a dark look into what ordinary people may be capable of with the right mental justification. Something I worry about more and more these days.
The horror here is very much psychological and implied. We see a few killings, but not a lot in the way of gore. Indeed there’s no focus on the victims here or their terror as they are stalked or attacked. Most of them are taken by surprise and none of them are notable characters. This is focused on the killers and human nature as a whole. Mamiya is an interesting antagonist, manipulative and yet apparently helpless at the same time. Takabe is a good antagonist too. Flawed, but driven. He struggles with having to look after his wife (Who suffers from schizophrenia) and having such a mentally taxing day job doesn’t help. The conclusion of the story is quite unsettling and yet also somewhat open ended.
Conclusion
Visually this film matches the tone of the story perfectly. The cinematography here favors long shots, visual isolation and heavy use of space, which gives the film style somewhat reminiscent of a Edward Hopper painting. There is a certain detachment to it. The characters are detached from each other, the killers especially so of their victims and the viewer from the brutality of the killings. By contrast Mamiya is the opposite, he has a natural empathy but uses it to convince people to kill. It shows that empathy too can be a double edged sword.
In some ways the movie was a bit predictable, but I’m not sure that matters. This is something true of neo-noir’s and film noir in general, since knowing where things will go is sometimes where the suspense comes from (See Hitchcock’s bomb analogy). Noir is fatalistic and this movie follows that tradition. This is an unsettling movie that sticks with you. Ultimately not as much as Kurosawa’s “Pulse” did. For me though I think that is because that movie personally resonated with me. Objectively speaking I’d say this is on par and deserves the same score. A strong 7/10.
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