Noroi the curse is a Japanese horror film that was released in 2005. Directed by Koji Shiraishi, the film is presented in a found footage style, similar to The Blair Witch Project. The story revolves around a documentary filmmaker named Masafumi Kobayashi who is investigating a series of strange events that are believed to be caused by a curse. The film begins with the discovery of a cursed video tape, similar to the one found in the popular horror film, The Ring. According to legend, anyone who watches the tape will be haunted by a curse and will die within a week. Kobayashi starts to investigate the origins of the curse and its effects on its victims.

Movie Review – Noroi: The Curse

By 2005, J-horror popularity in the United States was peaking. There were so many poorly made and poorly received adaptations that producers began looking elsewhere for something to exploit. That’s a shame because Noroi became a film criminally overlooked by audiences in the States. This is one of the best found-footage horror films I’ve ever seen, and I’m someone who typically hates this subgenre. Noroi works because it doesn’t just stick with the framing of seeing the movie through the eyes of someone walking around, holding a camera the whole time. Instead, it engages in mass media as part of its narrative, cleverly telling its story through complex structures that add up to a single disturbing whole.

Noroi introduces itself as the final video in a series of paranormal investigations by researcher Masafumi Kobayashi. Kobayashi has gone missing since a fire at his home that killed his wife. We’re told by the narrator that this video has been cobbled together with the footage made during the researcher’s final investigation. That mystery begins with him looking into Junko Ishii, a strange woman whose neighbor complains of hearing crying babies coming from her house. Junko is incredibly hostile and speaks strangely to Kobayashi when confronted. Days later, she suddenly moves, and the complaining neighbor and her daughter die tragically off-screen. This only encourages Kobayashi to follow the clues to uncover what is really going on.

The film then begins using segments from fictional television programs. A television comedy duo and their guest, actress Marika Matsumoto visit a supposedly haunted shrine in the forests. She has a seizure and begins sleepwalking afterward. Then there’s the story of Kana Yano, a young girl who appeared with a group of children who had shown psychic abilities. She has the most prevalent displays and even manifests water from thin air. Shortly after appearing on the show, Kana disappears. Kobayashi also meets Mitsuo Hori, a paranoid and mentally unwell man who covers himself and his home in tinfoil. He rants about “ectoplasmic worms” that are everywhere and trying to eat people. He claims to have met Kana and knows that she was taken by something. During his investigation, Kobayashi hears the name “Kagutaba,” and this one word brings him to a rural village where a deep sense of evil pervades the air. The choices he makes as these seemingly disparate people come together will lead to the opening of a door and the arrival of a powerful evil into our universe.

Noroi is such a well-crafted horror story, feeling literary yet working perfectly as a film. I was reminded of horror literature that dabbles in the world of film like House of Leaves or Michael Wehunt’s fantastic short story “October Film Haunt: Under the House.” The exact explanation of what is happening is kept at arm’s length. There are enough pieces to come up with some solid conclusions, but the movie itself leaves things open enough to make speculating after the end credits a lot of fun. The film never falls into the rut many found footage movies do of being too mundane. This is helped with the conceit of the edited and produced video framing. We’re not just watching raw footage; this is something turned into a product to sell by a video production company.

The characters in the movie also feel more alive than many dull ones you’ll find in movies like Paranormal Activity. Kobayashi is arrogant and goes headfirst into situations, thinking he is beyond reproach. Marika feels like someone having a breakdown with reality, unsure of what has happened to her. Mitsuo Hori is a fantastically wild character who is genuinely scary. He is shown to have the ability to see things that ordinary people simply cannot, and for most of the film, we don’t get to see them. There’s a jarring moment at the end of the second act where the camera gets to see through Hori’s eyes briefly, and it is nightmarish, unlike anything I’ve seen in another movie. Because these characters feel like they have lives off-screen, it adds to the fictional reality of Noroi and absorbs the audience deeper.

The funny thing about Noroi is that the film is devoid of any conventional scares. There are no moments designed to jolt the audience or any shocking reveals until close to the end. The horror is about as slow-burning as it gets, creeping dread that’s cultivated by small little pieces falling into place. Kana’s strange appearance as a young psychic on tv raises some questions. Marika finds she’s knotting yarn in her sleep to make a peculiar pattern over and over. Hori rambles about the worms being everywhere. People tell stories about hearing noise from a neighbor. Much like Ringu, none of this is scary on its own, but the director is building up to something. By the time we’re in the middle of nowhere searching for a town buried underwater due to the construction of a dam, it feels like the tension is on the verge of exploding.

Noroi is also a film that might not feel like it was worth it immediately. That slow burn doesn’t necessarily explode in the third act. It is, however, a film that rewards close viewing and rewatching. A second viewing will reveal how seeds of what was to come were so cleverly planted in pieces of dialogue or seemingly innocuous details. You begin to see how unconventional Noroi is in the found footage genre compared to the more famous American counterparts. This isn’t following a formula, and it demands patience from its viewers. Because Noroi plays with the form of found footage, it never fails to surprise at every turn, a truly unique entry in the genre.

Share this:

• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)

Film / Noroi: The Curse

Masafumi Kobayashi is an investigative journalist who specializes in researching supernatural occurrences. In 2004, after finishing his latest video documentary, a fire broke out in his home. His wife's body was found inside, but Kobayashi himself was declared missing. His video, formerly considered too disturbing to show to the public, is the main segment of the movie. Shown through the video recordings of his personal investigation and clips of television shows, the documentary ties together the threads of a collection of strange events known as The Curse (Noroi, in Japanese).

Kobayashi starts to investigate the origins of the curse and its effects on its victims. As Kobayashi investigates further, he uncovers a number of unsettling occurrences and encounters with supernatural phenomena. He interviews various individuals who have had experiences with the curse, including a woman who claims to have psychic abilities and a former actress who was once possessed by a malevolent spirit.

This film provides examples of:

• Abandoned Area: The abandoned shrine to Kagutaba.
• Always Save the Girl: The last third of the movie is spurned on by the disappearance of Kana and an attempt to find her, as well as the need to stop Marika's curse by performing a ritual.
• Animal Motifs: Pigeons.
• Arc Words: Two. Kagutaba and ectoplasmic worms
• The Bad Guy Wins: Kagutaba is one of the few characters to survive the film. Though 'winning' is an odd word, as we're not entirely sure what he was hoping to accomplish aside from ensuring he had a physical body.
• Big Word Shout: "KANAAAAAAAAA!"
• Body and Host: Both Junko Ishii and the boy .
• Character Tics: Hori is always making odd motions with his hands, adjusting his hat, scratching his neck, and just generally fidgeting.
• Cosmic Horror Story: Big time.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: In the finale, Hori rants that Kagutaba survived, and it's within the boy. He's absolutely right.
• Creepy Child: The unnamed boy living with Junko Ishii.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Kobayashi's wife sets herself on fire while under Kagutaba's influence, and Hori the psychic is found dead and crammed into a vent.
• Cult Colony: Shimokage Village, before it was flooded by the creation of a dam .
• Curse: People who have an inkling of, or have pissed off, the malevolent entity Kagutaba die. Hell, the mother and child that tipped off Kobayashi to the events of the film die under very suspicious circumstances.
• Death of a Child: Kana.
• Don't Go in the Woods: The climax.
• Downer Ending: A foregone conclusion. It's outright stated in the beginning that Kobayashi's wife is dead and that his own body has never been found. The only good to be taken from the ending is that Marika was cured, and the slim chance that Kobayashi may still be alive .
• Driven to Suicide: Midori, a girl who worked with Marika, kills herself alongside six other people, including a young man Kobayashi was investigating . Also, Junko Ishii .
• Eldritch Abomination: Kagutaba. It's never sufficiently explained what the Kagutaba actually is or where it came from, its mere presence (which is felt everywhere) drives people to do bizarre things and it has a habit of mind-controlling people to commit suicide. Kagutaba spends the film controlling people to summon itself into our world, but if there is any purpose behind its actions beyond that, it's utterly incomprehensible - it never seems to be an actively malicious character but more a generally harmful force that cares little to not at all about the people it destroys, and doesn't seem to pursue anything more. The first thing established about Kagutaba is that no one in the modern world knows what it is, and that those who knew about it in older times summoned it to kill people - though it's completely ambiguous as to whether or not they forced it to do so, or if it would have done these things anyway. While the villagers of Shimokage called it a demon, the professor Kobayashi visits speculates that it was simply convenient for them to call it that because they had no idea what it was. There is a subtle implication it's not so much a demon as it is a malevolent deity.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: It's explained that Kagutaba was conjured to torment or attack specific targets of the sorcerors who originally summoned it, but it had a will of its own and began to operate independently of the spell.
• Framing Device: The film is presented as a documentary on the disappearance of Kobayashi. That's why the film is interspersed with found footage, variety show segments, and still frames/images as necessary.
• Forced to Watch: At the end of the film, Kobayashi displays uncommon kindness by taking a mentally disturbed person into his home - heartwarming, yeah? It ends with this person having a (justified) episode that they're also sheltering the entity that the film centers around (and he's correct), attempting to beat the child hosting it to death with a stone, braining Kobayashi with it to keep him from interfering, and eventually Kobayashi is forced to watch his wife burn to death while utterly helpless .
• Force Feeding: while we never see it, Kana is forced to eat the aborted fetuses .
• Four Is Death: During the ritual to pacify Kagutaba, four claps are required between bows, and the ritual in this exact village is the only time and place where this bow is performed.
  • Kana answers four questions correctly on the variety show segment. For the next question, she draws the Kagutaba mask , when the actual card shows "звезда," the Russian word for "star."
  • As well as Junko Ishii's "son" - he IS Kagutaba, and it's not clear if he was a normal boy whom Junko kidnapped to give Kagutaba a physical body, or the entity itself .
  • Also, what happens to Junko Ishii's "son" at the end. And you thought the face in Inland Empire was fucking scary.
  • Junko's house too (loops, debris, and dead pigeons aplenty).
  • Also Mariko, frequently, though she also combines it with possessed groans .
  • Kobayashi's wife Keiko as she burns to death .

  Intermittent Mechanism

  

  The found footage style of the film adds to the sense of realism and tension. Viewers are taken along with Kobayashi as he delves deeper into the mystery, experiencing the fear and uncertainty that he and his subjects feel. Noroi the curse is known for its slow-burn approach to horror, building suspense gradually throughout the film. The events become increasingly intense and terrifying as the curse's grip on its victims tightens. The film also incorporates elements of Japanese folklore and urban legends, adding to its eerie and otherworldly atmosphere. Despite being relatively unknown outside of Japan, Noroi the curse has gained a cult following and is considered one of the best examples of J-horror. It offers a fresh and unique take on the found footage subgenre, combining supernatural elements with psychological horror and suspense..

  Reviews for "Noroi: The Curse - A Slow-Burn Horror Gem You Need to See"

  1. John - 1/5 stars - "I was really looking forward to watching 'Noroi the curse' based on all the positive reviews I had read. However, I was sorely disappointed. The movie dragged on and on, and I kept waiting for something scary to happen, but it never did. The plot was convoluted and confusing, and the use of found footage style made it even harder to follow. Overall, I found 'Noroi the curse' to be a complete waste of time."

  2. Emily - 2/5 stars - "While 'Noroi the curse' had a promising premise, the execution was lacking. The movie relied too heavily on slow-burn horror and atmospheric tension, but failed to deliver any real scares. I found myself dozing off multiple times throughout the film due to the lack of engagement. Additionally, the ending left me feeling unsatisfied and confused. Overall, 'Noroi the curse' did not live up to its reputation as a terrifying found footage film."

  3. Laura - 2/5 stars - "I had high hopes for 'Noroi the curse', but unfortunately, it fell short of my expectations. The pacing was extremely slow, and the plot meandered without any clear direction. The supposed scares were few and far between, and when they did occur, they were underwhelming. The found footage style, while initially intriguing, became tiresome and added little to the overall narrative. Ultimately, 'Noroi the curse' failed to deliver on its promises of horror and left me feeling bored and disappointed."

  4. Michael - 1/5 stars - "'Noroi the curse' is hands down one of the most boring and uneventful horror movies I have ever seen. The entire film felt like a never-ending series of disjointed and meaningless scenes. I kept waiting for something genuinely spooky or terrifying to happen, but all I got was a headache from the shaky camera footage. The story was convoluted and lacked a cohesive narrative, making it difficult to stay invested. I would not recommend wasting your time on this lackluster film."

  The Influence of Noroi: The Curse on the Found Footage Horror Genre