An international breakout for writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Cure takes a familiar thriller scenario—a mysterious series of murders—and imbues it with a metaphysical sense of dread. This is the sort of movie that will make you shiver over little more than a fixed shot of an empty beach as it’s darkened by a passing cloud. Koji Yakusho stars as Detective Takabe, lead investigator of a grisly series of murders in which the killers—each of whom carves an X on their victim’s chest—can barely remember committing the crime. Could hypnotism be involved? Cure eventually provides answers, but it’s the mood, not the plot, that makes this such a chilling portrait of murder and mental illness. Like an unsettled mind, Cure is littered with background disturbances: the rumbling washing machine in Takabe’s home; the blinking red lights of a railroad crossing; a scraping sound (or is it screaming?) heard in the corridors of a hospital. “My head is about to split open!” Takabe screams as the investigation intensifies, an experience Kurosawa evokes in the sound design, as well as the occasional use of near-subliminal flash cuts. Cure is not an experience for the faint of heart.
(8/25/2026)
