Cure (film)

Kenichi Takabe, a Tokyo Metropolitan Police detective, is involved in the investigation of a bizarre series of violent killings by seemingly random perpetrators. In each case the murderers have been caught close to the scene of the crime. Each one has mutilated his or her victim by carving a large "X" into the neck or chest of the deceased. Although all of the perpetrators readily confess and remember their deeds, none seems to have substantial motives or explanations for their actions. Takabe is at a loss for answers. His private life also seems to falter, as his wife Fumie suffers from phases of schizophrenia and frequently gets lost in the neighborhood.

Takabe, together with his friend and colleague, forensic psychologist Shin Sakuma, eventually identifies a common thread connecting the murders. Each killer, shortly before killing, came in contact with a man named Kunio Mamiya. Mamiya appears to have extreme short-term memory loss and claims to recall nothing of his past. In custody, Mamiya constantly evades Takabe's questions by asking about the detective's identity and private life. Sakuma has Mamiya transferred to prison care ward. The pressure of the unsolved cases and his wife deteriorating condition take its toll, causing Takabe to lose his composure. At one point during the questioning, he expresses resentment towards Fumie in front of an amused Mamiya.

Searching through Mamiya's belongings, Takabe and Sakuma discover that Mamiya used to study psychology, specifically mesmerism and hypnosis. Takabe suspects that Mamiya has no memory problems at all and is in fact a master of hypnosis capable of planting homicidal suggestions in strangers' minds by exposing them to repetitive sounds, such as the motion of water or the flame of a lighter. Takabe has Mamiya charged with incitement to murder. After experiencing a vision of Fumie's suicide, he commits her to a mental hospital.

Sakuma shows Takabe a videotape featuring a mysterious man speculated to be Suejiro Bakuro, the originator of Japanese mesmerism in Mamiya's mesmerism literature. In the video, a female subject was hypnotized by the man, who gestured an "X" in midair. The woman later killed her son in a manner similar to the crimes they are investigating. Sakuma believes the crimes have a connection to the past, and describes Mamiya as a missionary of ceremonial murders. Subsequently, Sakuma unconsciously draws an X in black paint on his wall and starts to experience hallucinations of Takabe menacingly cornering him. Several days later, the police discover Sakuma's body handcuffed to a pipe in his home and conclude that he committed suicide.

Mamiya escapes from prison, killing a policeman in the process. Takabe tracks him to a deserted building and shoots him. Before dying, Mamiya draws an X in the air in front of Takabe. Exploring the building, Takabe finds and plays an old phonograph cylinder containing a recording of a male voice, thought to be that of Bakuro, repeating what seem to be hypnotic instructions. Shortly after, Fumie's already decomposed corpse is found by a nurse, with an "X" savagely carved into her throat.

In a restaurant, a waitress serves Takabe, walks away, is whispered to by several staff members, and silently draws a knife.

Cure was shown theatrically in Japan on December 27, 1997, by Shochiku subsidiary Shochiku-Fuji Company, which was known for distributing many western movies, such as The Last Emperor, Thelma and Louise and Tom and Jerry: The Movie.^[6] The film was shown in the United States at the San Francisco International Film Festival on April 25, 1998.^[7] It was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1999 as part of a career retrospective on Kurosawa.^[8][9] The film received a theatrical release in the United States by Cowboy Booking in 2001.^[10][9]

The film was released on home video for the first time in the UK as part of The Masters of Cinema Series on April 23, 2018.^[11] The Criterion Collection released the film on Blu-ray in the United States on October 18, 2022.^[12]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Cure has a 94% approval rating based on 63 reviews, with an average score of 7.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Mesmerizing and psychologically intriguing."^[4] Tom Mes of Midnight Eye described the film as "a horror film in the purest sense of the word".^[13] Meanwhile, A. O. Scott of The New York Times noted that Kiyoshi Kurosawa "turns the thriller into a vehicle for gloomy social criticism."^[14] Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club said: "Kurosawa, a prolific genre stylist who specializes in low-key thrillers and horror films, undercuts the lurid material by keeping a chilly, almost clinical distance from the events and unfolding the story in elliptical pieces."^[15] For Screen Slate, Stephanie Monohan wrote: "Arguably overshadowed by other films in the turn-of-the-century J-Horror canon like Ringu (1998) and Audition (1999), Cure lives on as one of the more powerful works of the era."^[16]

Kurosawa, speaking about the success of Cure, stated: "I watched a lot of American horror movies growing up, and I had wanted to make a movie in that genre for some years. Then the growth in popularity of genre films made it easier for me to get the project financed and produced. So, the circumstance was the key factor to the success of Cure, and it has continued to play an important role in my career ever since."^[17]

In 2012, South Korean film director Bong Joon-ho listed the film as one of the greatest films of all time.^[18]

• Clark, Jason. "Cure (1997)". AllMovie. Retrieved May 2, 2018.
• Gerow, Aaron (December 25, 1997). "Cure*". The Daily Yomiuri. p. 9. Archived from the original on May 9, 2015. Retrieved March 28, 2023.
• Harris, Dana (November 13, 2002). "UA Sure 'Cure' Will Redo". Variety. Retrieved March 28, 2023.
• Murguia, Salvador Jimenez, ed. (2016). The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1442261679.

• Cure at IMDb
• Cure at Rotten Tomatoes  
• Cure at AllMovie
• Cure at the Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese)
• Cure at the TCM Movie Database