The only time I can recall being as spooked by a film was when my parents took me to see "Hangover Square" - a gothic Jack the Ripper thriller - when I was 8 years old. I guess they couldn't find a baby-sitter. That took me about a year to get over, a low-key, all-too-realistic chiller about the banality of insanity.
"Cure" is such a perfect depiction of madness that just about every shot could be framed & hung in a gallery. You can't analyze this one, it doesn't follow a cartesian line of logic; nor does it blast you with halloweenish surprises in the style of Elm Street & its knock-offs. This has far deeper & subtler impact. I found as I relaxed into this film that images of recurring dreams & nightmares I've had since childhood arose & blended into what I was watching. Can't get much creepier than that.
That said, the images & emotions that this film evokes are on a very high level of poetic art. One of the most impressive elements of "Cure" is the director's ability to convey the magnetic manipulative appeal of Mamiya - surely one of the scariest things in real life & very difficult to convincingly convey on screen.
![A mesmerising and hypnotic psychological thriller from Kiyoshi Kurosawa...
Released to critical acclaim in both the East and the West, CURE was a breakthrough film for director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a nerve shredding thriller about the hunt for a serial killer in a bleak and decaying Tokyo.
A series of murders have been committed by ordinary people who claim to have had no control over their horrifying actions. Following the only link - a mysterious stranger who had brief contact with each perpetrator and their victim - detective Kenichi Takabe (Kôji Yakusho, 13 ASSASSINS, TOKYO SONATA) places his own sanity on the line as he tries to end the wave of inexplicable terror.
Described as one of the greatest films of all time by Bong Joon-ho (THE HOST, SNOWPIERCER), CURE is a deeply unsettling masterpiece of its genre, and has shockingly been unavailable on home video in the UK until now. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Cure in a special Dual Format edition.
CURE [Kyua], Kiyoshi Kurosawa's mesmerising and hypnotic psychological thriller, is released on home video for the first time in the UK as part of The Masters of Cinemas Series in a Dual Format edition on 23 April 2018.](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZjdlYmU3YTktZTQzNi00YWE5LTgzZjQtYmI3OTRkNTQyYTkxXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTg2NTc4MzA@._V1_QL75_UX500_CR0,0,500,281_.jpg)
