Shudder Saturday: Noroi: The Curse (2005)

Another hand-held horror means another divisive movie that fans should still seek out and make up their own minds about. This is a film I first watched over a decade ago, after having it recommended to me by many other horror movie fans, and it's one I was long overdue to revisit.

Imagine a cross between The Blair Witch Project and The Grudge and you're close to the overall content of this movie. It's another videotaped horror but this time most of it is edited together in readiness for a video doc that was never completed by a supernatural investigator (Masafumi Kobayashi, played by Jin Muraki) who disappeared.

I certainly had a feeling of dread while watching this movie (does anyone do dread better than our Asian friends?) but it's worth noting that the creepy moments, the genuinely creepy moments, are interspersed sparingly throughout the third act. That's not to say that you can't be scared by the rest of the film, it's just that the other details are deliberately layered in a way to build up to one hell of a finale.

The direction by Kôji Shiraishi, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Naoyuki Yokota, is spot on. Shiraishi has a filmography well worth exploring, and his name will be familiar to fans of "J-horror", but this is most possibly his finest hour. Everything feels genuine throughout, helped by the performances. Muraki is convincing in his way with everyone he meets, adapting to how they are in his direct interactions, Satoru Jitsunashi is believably jittery and unnerved as an apparent psychic, Mitsuo Hori, and Marika Matsumoto does well in a role that has her playing a version of herself.

The only main downfall to the film is that I felt I was two or three steps ahead of the investigator when apparent "revelations" appeared throughout, therefore I can't recommend this as highly as something that uses the format in a similar way, but keeps things moving a bit quicker in a way that stops you having the time to think ahead ([*Rec] being the main example that springs to mind).

Having said that, it would be remiss of me not to highly recommend any film that goes on at length about ectoplasmic worms, contains at least two subtly spooky ghost moments, and managed to get me to put the lights back on for a while when the sun went down. It's not quite the flawless classic that some of the praise for it might lead you to believe, although it certainly comes closer than most films done in this style,

Noroi: The Curse is definitely one to make time for. It's a crime that we've never had a decent disc release for it here in the UK, because so many people have instead ended up watching it on . . . various other sites.

8/10

Japanuary: Teketeke (2009)

Japan seems to have a wealth of both urban legends and traditional myths that can reach from past centuries to still affect, and unsettle, those living in the modern age. You have the modern creations, such as Sadako and Kayako, you have the enduring and creepy imagery of the slit-mouthed woman, and you have ghosts and ghouls around every corner. Which means that you can usually take a gamble on one of their horror movies and find something to like, whether that is a creepy atmosphere, an interesting legend, or some unsettling death scenes.

Usually. Teketeke has none of those things though, sadly, and is perhaps the biggest disappointment I have seen within the realms of Japanese horror in the last two decades.

The main story concerns the spirit of a woman who appears, moving along on her front hands as she is missing her legs, and then cuts people in half. If she doesn't get her victim there and then, the clock starts. She will get them three days later. She is also drawn to the colour red, looking to get rid of anything of that colour because she associates it with, well, that's part of the backstory that isn't for me to reveal here. The two main potential victims are a young woman named Kana (Yûko Ôshima) and her cousin, Rie (Mami Yamasaki), racing against time to figure out what they can do to save their lives, and being helped by a young man named Takeda (Shin'nosuke Abe).

Unbeknownst to me, this was the second movie I watched in just over a week that was directed by Kôji Shiraishi. The last one was A Slit-Mouthed Woman, which I was also disappointed by. That looks a lot better now, however, when compared to this one. There's absolutely nothing here that's done as effectively as it could be. Even the main figure, someone who could put you on edge as she creeps into view, is shot in such a way as to make it seem silly. Oh, it's a woman running into view on her hands. That's it. To make up for the low budget, things are never in focus, the editing is choppy, and you don't get one proper look at what should have been the star of the show.

These problems plague almost every scene. Deaths are unspectacular, although you get a decent splash of blood on most occasions, tension is non-existent, and the camerawork is just downright annoying. And there's nothing else to distract you from the negatives. The backstory isn't interesting enough, the investigation to discover it means we get many scenes that we're already familiar with, having seen them done better in more enjoyable movies.

Ôshima and Yamasaki do well in their roles, as well as can be expected anyway, and they manage to make an impression simply due to the fact that they're in peril for the second half of the runtime. And the runtime is brief, which is another bonus.

I really can't think of one reason why people would watch this. Which, despite my complaints, doesn't mean it is one of the worst horror movies out there. It's just no good when compared to the many other Japanese horrors that you could check out.

3/10

Japanuary: A Slit-Mouthed Woman (2007)

If you have any experience of Japanese horror, or knowledge of some of their lore, then you'll be aware of the slit-mouthed woman. Legend has it that she would appear in front of you, wearing a mask and carrying a sharp object, and ask you if she was pretty. Answer no and you get the business end of the sharp object. Answer yes and she moves the mask away to show that her mouth has been slit open at the corners (hence . . . slit-mouthed woman). She will once again ask if she is pretty. Answer no and you are killed. Answer yes and she uses the sharp object to make you look just like her. She doesn't sound like someone you'd really want to meet, but nor does any boogeyman, which is what she is. It's an enduring urban legend, and there have been, unsurprisingly, a number of movies made about her. This is just one of them, not to be confused with Slit Mouth Woman from 2008.

Children start to be kidnapped in a small Japanese town and reports from witnesses seem to point to the infamous slit-mouthed woman as the main suspect. Is she real? Or is it just someone wearing a mask and using the fear of the legend to make their crime spree more frightening? Kyôko Yamashita (Eriko Satô) has to dive fully into investigation mode when her daughter (Mika Sasaki, played by Rie Kuwana) disappears one day. Noboru Matsuzaki (Haruhiko Katô) helps her, having already spent some time trying to confirm his own suspicions about the killer.

It's strange to see this directed by Kôji Shiraishi, who also co-wrote the script with Naoyuki Yokota. The two had previously worked together on the excellent Noroi: The Curse (now there's a horror film crying out for a super duper release if ever I saw one), which managed to feel very grounded in reality while making use of various plot details that felt like genuine Japanese lore (I cannot recall now how much, if any, of the background to the events were sourced from reality). So a film about the slit-mouthed woman should allow them to once again scare the crap out of viewers, and allow them to once again ground the horror in a reality that makes the sense of dread all the more palpable. But they don't bother. Instead, they serve up a film that is almost a standard crime thriller, with a memorable villain at the heart of everything.

I realise that what I'm saying could actually be applied to a lot of modern horror movies from Japan - they're most often about people investigating the circumstances around one or more deaths - but A Slit-Mouthed Woman doesn't have any of the scares that the others do. I suspect Shiraishi and Yokota figured that the woman herself would be the main scare, and her physical appearance is certainly enough to cause a shiver to run down your spine, but they should really have worked on a number of decent set-pieces to keep everyone on their toes.

Satô and Katô are fine in their roles, yet they're often trying to make something out of nothing, discovering revelations delivered by the script that will be obvious to most people from the earliest scenes. Kuwana has to be a child in peril, and acts accordingly, and Miki Mizuno does a good job as the woman with the "Glasgow smile".

There's nothing here that's badly done, and the figure using the mask allows for some extra paranoia that feels as specific to Japan as the rest of the lore being utilised, but far too much of the runtime is relatively free of tension and actual scares. Which is always a tough hurdle for a horror movie to overcome.

6/10

Americans can buy the movie here.