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“I sometimes wonder if I could go back to that era now… I have the will to try to go back, to do only what I truly want to do, to not think about anything. It might end up the worst thing ever. But that’s OK if that’s the case. Because 25 years from now, putting aside whether I’m alive or not, they might say ‘What a weird movies this is.'”–Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2022
DIRECTED BY: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
FEATURING: Kôji Yakusho, Masato Hagiwara
PLOT: Takabe, a Tokyo detective who spends his spare time caring for his mentally ill wife, investigates a series of ritualistic murders committed by seemingly ordinary people with no apparent motive. It emerges that what the cases have in common is that all of the perpetrators had recently encountered Mamiya, a mysterious man who appears to have no short term memory. Further investigation leads to discovery of an old pseudo-occultist mesmerist technique, and Mamiya emerges as more aware than he initially seemed, while Takabe’s wife’s condition continues to deteriorate.
BACKGROUND:
- Kiyoshi Kurosawa cut his teeth in V-Cinema (direct-to-video features), mostly pink films, yakuza movies, and horrors, with only a few of his creations actually getting a theatrical release. After more than a decade of paying his dues, he had proven his commercial bona fides and was finally given creative control, along with a bigger budget and a bankable actor in Kôji Yakusho, to make the movie he always wanted with Cure.
- Originally titled Missionary (or Evangelist, depending on the translation), the name was changed to Cure to avoid religious connotations after the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attacks.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: A desiccated monkey corpse tied to a shower rod, arms crossed.
TWO WEIRD THINGS: Fumie’s non-suicide; cloudy bus to asylum
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Presenting as a police procedural with paranormal elements, Cure is actually a psychologically rich exploration of the search for identity and the battle with the impulse to evil inside each of us.
Restoration trailer for Cure
COMMENTS: In my original Cure review, written after a first viewing, I somewhat presciently wrote “Cure does seem like a movie that could well age into an outstanding vintage if it’s left to ferment in the cellar of the viewer’s subconscious for a time, which is why I suspect I’ll be returning to sample it again someday.” Looking back, I can hardly understand why Cure failed to impress me more on a first viewing. Clearly, the filmmaking is superior: the technical aspects are all top notch, sound design is superlative, the plot is perfectly paced to reveal information in slow drips while developing the characters, and the performances of the volatile Yakusho as the stressed cop and the serene Hagiwara as the enigmatic amnesiac are exactly what the film needs. The weirdness is subtle throughout, then builds nicely at the conclusion to suggest a descent from the external world into the subconscious. I suppose what threw me off from fully appreciating Cure was its hypnosis-based plot, which is in actuality a MacGuffin Kurosawa uses to explore deeper issues of alienation, identity, and moral corruption, but which I took a bit too seriously at first blush. I’m comforted by the fact that Oscar-winning director Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car) had a similar experience with the film: “when I first watched it, I wasn’t sure what had happened, to be honest. I only found it super intriguing after seeing it a second time. I thought, ‘Wow, it was this complex?’ after a little time had passed. So I want to ask you to please watch it twice.”
In that second viewing, what impresses me is the film’s sparse atmosphere, suggesting the utter isolation of its characters. There are no crowd shots. The few times we do see many characters onscreen at the same time, most of them are policemen, nameless and faceless officials milling about, who might as well be furniture. Tokyo seems depopulated, as if the daily killings are taking their toll. There are numerous moments where characters stand alone, dwarfed by their environments. Many scenes show just two characters interacting, and much of the time, they are matched with Mimaya—who is, at those moments, actually merging with the personality of his interrogee, inserting himself into their psyche. Although there are two actors onscreen, one is merely a dark aspect of the other, a universal shadow. Many of these scenes are shot in long takes that invite the viewer to intensely enter into these conversations, as if they are trapped in the scene. Geometries of rooms and buildings are improbably spacious, again dwarfing the individuals. Music is used sparingly; sounds of items rattling or clinking offscreen are frequently the only sonic input. Scenes inside vehicles often use rear projection to present exteriors which are sometimes relatively realistic, but sometimes look like banks of fog or clouds. The aggregate effect of these directorial choices is subtly eerie; Cure occurs is a lonely world where the quiet is periodically broken by outbursts of violence, with the perpetrators looking as detached from their crimes as if they were merely pouring a cup of coffee or lighting a cigarette, instead of beating a prostitute to death with a steel pipe.
The primary question the plot poses is: why is Takabe apparently the only person able to resist Mimaya’s hypnotic suggestions? (The secondary question is, what is the “cure” of the title?) There is a point, almost exactly halfway through the film, when Takabe and Miyama are alone together; we have seen no one else in that situation who has been able to escape Miyama’s mesmeric control. And Takabe continues to interrogate the stranger—who somehow knows details of the detective’s own thoughts that he should not—without himself becoming a killer. What makes Takabe different—or is Takabe different? Miyama directly tells Takabe he’s different, special—but is this just flattery, an appeal to the detective’s arrogant belief that he alone can figure out the reality behind these apparently senseless slaughters? Could the endorsement of Takabe’s specialness come from a more untrustworthy source?
Symbolically, the movie makes perfect sense. The detective solves the case, the hero defeats the monster, but, like Jason stabbing his hand up out of Camp Crystal Lake, there is a final hint that the struggle is eternal. But in the literal sense, the story is troublesome. There are many points at which Takabe could have—should have—succumbed to Miyama’s homicidal mind virus. We don’t know what the subjective experience of those Miyama seduces is like; after arrest, they all claim their actions seemed perfectly normal and reasonable at the time. How much of the second half of the movie actually happens in the external world? That very struggle—between the clean lines of what should happen in a showdown between good and evil, and the blurry uncertainty of what actually does happen—gives Cure its power.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
OFFICIAL SITES:
Janus Films- Cure – Stills, synopsis, and a downloadable press book
Cure (1997) | The Criterion Collection – The trailer and links to essays concerning the film
IMDB LINK: Cure (1997)
OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:
THE J-HORROR VIRUS: Kiyoshi Kurosawa Reveals CURE Influences In Exclusive Clip – Clip from the 2025 documentary The J-Horror Virus discussing Cure
Koji Yakusho’s Closet Picks – The star of Cure selects titles from the Criterion closet, including one that’s familiar
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Cure’ (1997)- Plot Interpretation / Explanation – Reddit thread where viewers propose plot interpretations
LIST CANDIDATE: CURE (1997) – This site’s original List Candidate review
HOME VIDEO INFO:
Cure entered the Criterion Collection on Blu-ray (only) in 2022 (buy). Although the print was restored to 4K, the film has yet to be released on 4K UHD, although it’s only a matter of time before Criterion gets around to it. There is no commentary track, but features include a 2022 conversation between director Kurosawa and Ryusuke Hamaguchi, his former student (quoted above). There are also with separate interviews with stars Yakusho and Hagiwara, and another interview with Kurosawa from 2003. Cure is also on the Criterion Channel and, for non-subscribers, available for rental or purchase on VOD.