Cure

Madman 2010

R4 DVD

Japanese with English subtitles

Director Kyoshi Kurosawa has given us a truly dark film that is more psychology than action. It has been around since 1998 but apart from a small release in the United States it has not been released in English until now.

The plot is fairly simple. People are being murdered but none of the murderers remembers anything about it. A wife is killed by her husband, a policeman kills another officer at his station. The final killing blow in each case is when a cross is cut through the victims’ throats, severing their carotid arteries. It is obvious to Detective Takabe that there is some sort of serial killer at work, but who or what is the connection between the murders? Suspicion falls on a young man, Mamiya. He has briefly known each of the victims or killers and seems to be the only connection, but he too claims that he has lost his memory of each contact. In fact he forgets bits of conversations that have just happened. Takabe starts to have strange hallucinations about murdering his young wife who suffers from a mental illness and takes up all his spare time. Is the case getting to him?

Mamiya is put in a mental institution while Takabe tries to track down his past. He eventually finds where Mamiya has been living and what he finds goes a long way to explaining the murders and his own hallucinations - perhaps. Has Mamiya been playing games in Takabe’s head? If so how can Takabe put an end to it to protect his wife? Is Mamiya himself the victim of somebody’s head games or is he the most evil person alive?

Kurosawa hands out clues grudgingly, requiring the viewer to think carefully about the plot as it develops. It is not a logical sequence of events but a suggestion here, a clue there, and it must all come together in your own mind before the direction becomes clear. Even then there is little hint of the final action that will be necessary, and I confess I didn’t see it coming.

If you like your films to make you think and you can handle the very dark content of this film, give it a try.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No. 3 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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