User Reviews

Nao (Hiroko Satô) works at a haunted convenience store. Customers die. Would be customers die. The owners are odd and no one works there very long. The haunting and killings does not generate a lot of horror. An hour into the film a woman with a doll for a baby, not played by Jessica Biel, explains the curse. The explanation was anti-climatic to a story that really doesn't have a climax.

All those crows on the DVD cover are not in the film. Think two crows flying into a window. The film is different and had potential as a humorous horror, but didn't quite make it. Perhaps the funniest aspect was the misspelling English subscript. the owner would "correct the insurance money." It might be pronounced that way in Japan, but it really is "collect."

It's first important that I tell you that Cursed is very low budget. Why? Because the UK release has impressive box art that suggests this is an A-Movie with an A-Movie budget. It's not, it's a B-Movie with an unknown cast and low production values. It's very well made given it's budget, and some of Japan's best horror moments (Kairo, Ringu, Dark Water) are fairly low-budget by US/UK standards anyway, so by no means hold it's budget against it, but it IS very low budget.

Warnings aside, Cursed is a very odd, off-kilter horror. Being a Japanese film, Cursed does provide many of the things you'd expect, like lank haired, slow moving girl-ghosts, and bizarre signs and twists that lead your detective work from one side of the street to another continuously. However, it's the new elements that make it interesting. In terms of vibe and style, Cursed draws more from directors like Lynch, Shinya Tsukamoto and Miike Takashi than the key players in the J-Horror genre. If you're expecting a stop gap till they crank out the third Grudge, stop here. This ain't Ringu, it ain't Ju-on. It's a new beast entirely.

It goes like this. There's a convenience store where protagonist Nao works, and it's got a curse on it. When your items come up to any variant of 666 or 999, something follows you home from the store and messes up your life in one way or another. Mostly the victims get killed, but one or two have something different happen to them, and they're never followed by the same spirit, so each haunting/killing is different and unique. This is the second thing other than the direction that sets it apart from the rest of the J-Horror crowd. In the Ring films and others of their ilk, the horror is in wondering at what point the ghost will appear, whereas in Cursed, while you know something is gonna turn nasty at any moment, anything could happen, so you're more on edge.

Still, despite it being fresh and new in style, there are a few niggling factors that got on my nerves. The hypnotic, trippy visuals make the hauntings and deaths more hallucinatory than scary, so in honesty Cursed is not a hugely frightening movie. It's far less overblown or cliché than something like Shutter or One Missed Call, but in it's experimentalist nature it loses a lot of the ghost-house fun of a straight horror movie. I got annoyed at times with the random bouts of cartoon violence as well, there's a few scenes that aren't as horrific as they could be with a little more restraint, and when there is blood (and to be honest this movie earns it's 18 certificate quite admirably with one scene alone) there's too much and it collapses into Brian Yuzna style comic book violence.

Minor issues with an otherwise brave and very creepy entry into the J-Horror library. It isn't a thrill ride, but Cursed is a spooky, psychedelic and above all believably dark tale that's well worth anyone's time.

In Japan nothing appears to be safe from hexes! And you have a good chance of crossing paths with one. This time around it's a haunted, doom 'n' gloom mini-mart store giving out bad vibes, the deadpan owners seem to be out of their minds and whenever 999 or 666 cha-chings on the cash register your ticket is up. And not just the idea of handing over your cash, but your life too.

Quite loopy when it wants to be, as there's a nightmare logic to the storytelling - things just happen, mainly bad things. It might at times use the same-old ghost tropes (eg whispering voices, bumps in the dark and possessions), but the set-pieces are overblown and amusingly staged for few WTF moments - like the faceless stranger in the Eskimo hooded jacket to the hallucinogenic eyeball popping out of somebody's head and blood shot eyes appearing in the darkest spots in the store. Some deaths are more effective than others, yet each one brought something different. My fave being a lady getting stalked by a man with a bandaged head dragging a sledgehammer behind him. The scene can be intense.

For its minor budget and digital look the director manages to craft stylistic flashes (albeit using slow-mo and encroaching camerawork) together with ratcheted suspense and weirdness. However what made it much more surreal is that the exposition drop explaining the background of the store comes from nowhere. Everybody goes about their daily routines, in spite of the unnatural occurrences surrounding the store like crows circling above. All we get are bemused looks from those who aren't yet affected, compared to the ones who seemed to be caught in a trance. So when a crazy old lady pushing a pram with a toy doll (who we see only for a brief second early in the film) decides drops by to warn the mystified staff of the store's evil origins - you know what they do next? The smartest thing; intelligibly walk away from their jobs. No conviction to investigate, or making peace with the unrest spirits. It's now somebody else's problem. So in a way the resolution doesn't provide any sort of payoff. This might explain why the plot comes around full circle and I couldn't understand why it would, other then to amplify one final shock. In doing so it just added to the convoluted structure set-up at the beginning. Tight, moody hyperphysical low-rent J-horror with no real method to its madness.

Although this movie seems to be a little cheesy with respect to the characters of the store owners, much of the rest of the movie is extremely creepy. Right away there is a sense that all is not well in this mini-mart. The people working in it and even the customers are at risk to walk out the front door and take something horrifying home with them. While the main characters are searching for an answer as to what or who is haunting this establishment, only the crazy woman with the baby carriage seems to understand the real inner workings of this mini-mart. When the craziest character in the movie has all the answers, you know anything can happen. What gives this movie the creeps is the three screen splice that shows three different characters as they leave the mini-mart and something is leaving with them. During the three screen splice we are listening to an anchorman with the up to date gory news of the day. As he reads the gruesome details the characters are becoming tomorrows news! This movie is a favorite of mine because each time you watch it, you still feel your hair stand on end, again and again.