... the deliberate pace may try the patience of some viewers, but it sets a perfect backdrop for the coldly matter-of-fact killings, which Kurosawa films with the passion of a blasé voyeur.

| Oct 21, 2024

a hauntingly intricate and deeply inquisitive thriller that questions the concepts of human morality, reason, and repression unlike any other film.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 3, 2024

Only a filmmaker as disciplined as Kurosawa would be able to live in such mysteries without losing their audience.

| Jan 19, 2024

Suspenseful and taught with plot twists galore, "Cure" is an overlooked masterpiece from the same filmmaker responsible for "Tokyo Sonata," another terrific movie, albeit from a different genre altogether.

| Original Score: FIVE STARS | Oct 21, 2023

It is such a demented take on the psychological thriller and one of the creepiest films in the last 25 years that it is worth a blind buy.

| Feb 14, 2023

an effective, deeply unsettling thriller that continues to perplex because it refuses the kinds of restorative satisfaction normally supplied by that genre

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 1, 2022

It was here that Kurosawa Kiyoshi's distinctive approach to genre film fully bloomed, an oblique form of horror that unsettles precisely for how much exists outside the frame as much as what lies within it.

| Oct 18, 2022

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure takes its time implanting itself in your mind before completely taking you over, not unlike the mysterious killer at the film's center.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 12, 2022

...leans more heavily into psychological horror and existential dread...emphasized by the isolation production designer Maruo and cinematographer Kikumura introduce with long shots of figures in sterile industrial locations and a windswept beach.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 2, 2022

There may not be demons or ghosts, but there is enough haunting existential dread to make Cure stick with you like an old nightmare.

| Oct 20, 2021

Lingers long after the credits roll.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 14, 2021

A magnificent horror-mystery narrative that reveals, in a pulsating way, the very truth that every subject hides a destructive drive and violent desire.

| Aug 14, 2020

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.

| Jan 14, 2020

"Cure" is a true masterpiece that transcends the borders of the J-horror by combining it with a number of philosophical comments, while Kurosawa's trait of creating imposing atmospheres finds its apogee here. A must-see for every fan of cinema.

| Oct 20, 2019

Cure is one of those rare films that truly gets under the viewer's skin.

| Nov 7, 2018

There's no escape from something that's always there and the film's morbid, doom-laden atmosphere will envelop you.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 26, 2018

Cure is bleak, but it may not be entirely hopeless: Realizing that "who are you?" is a question worth asking is better than never pondering it at all.

| Jun 26, 2018

If there's one thing that Cure particularly excels at, it's inexpertly creating a legitimate sense of dread at the drop of a hat.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 26, 2018

an increasingly hallucinatory piece where murderousness is a disease spreading rapidly through the susceptible Japanese psyche.

| Apr 23, 2018

It's unsatisfying as a story precisely because it aspires to create a mounting sense of dread by enlarging questions rather than answering them.

| Oct 17, 2011