Format: Streaming video from AMC+ through Amazon Prime on Fire!
When I started this blog, the biggest genre/style of film that I struggled with was musicals. I have definitely softened on musicals a great deal, and while a musical is rarely going to be my choice, there are plenty that I like. These days, the style I struggle with the most is found footage. There are certainly some found footage movies, or movies done in real-time online (a rough equivalent of found footage) that I think are great. The problem is that it’s also the style that is most accessible to lazy filmmakers. This being the case, I tend to go into them wary, even when they come with a lot of acclaim, like Noroi: The Curse.
Noroi (which is how I will refer to this from this point forward) is absolutely a found footage movie, but it has the benefit of being a found footage movie with the conceit of having been edited. That sounds like a contradiction, but it truly is not. What we have is a documentary filmmaker noted for explorations of the paranormal and his final work. So we have an edited story that doesn’t have to simply work in real-time or be filmed in order, but with the feel of a found footage movie.
What we learn from the jump is that paranormal researcher and documentarian Masafumi Kobayashi (Jim Muraki) was working on a documentary called The Curse. Kobayashi has vanished after his house burned down, and his wife was found dead in the ruins. From this opening, we get the story of what Kobayashi was investigating shown through some television footage and the recordings of Miyajima (Hisashi Miyajima playing as himself), his cameraman.
The story is going to start about 18 months or so before Kobayashi’s disappearance. Kobayashi hears of a woman complaining about her neighbor and goes to investigate. The neighbor, Junko Ishii (Tomono Kuga) is hostile and refuses to explain the sounds of crying babies coming from her house. Junko moves away, and an investigation on her property reveals dead pigeons. A few days after this investigation, the neighbor who complained about Junko and her daughter are killed in a car accident.
We’re also going to be introduced to Kana Yano (Rio Kanno), a young girl who exhibits remarkable psychic abilities on a television show. She is able to essentially see inside a sealed container to draw what is inside in all but one occasion—on that one trial, she draws a demonic face instead of what is on the paper in the container. She is also capable of manifesting water in a sealed bottle. When investigated, the water is filled with microorganisms as well as a hair that may be from an animal…or a newborn child. And, not surprisingly, Kana vanishes as well.
We will also meet Marika Matsumoto (playing a fictionalized version of herself), an actress who has been creating odd loops of yarn and wire while sleeping. Our reporter Kobayashi sets up a camera and records her saying “Kagutaba,” which is the name of a demon according to a local historian. A demon by that name was imprisoned by a local village, and it was appeased by an annual ritual before the village was destroyed to allow for the building of a dam. The final ritual was filmed, and the girl involved appears to become possessed…and that girl is Junko Ishii from the beginning of the narrative. Even more, Junko worked at a nursing school and performed illegal abortions, stealing the fetuses.
All of this is connected to a clearly disturbed psychic man named Mitsuo Hori (Satoru Jitsunashi). Hori appears to be connected in some way to everyone who has gone missing, including a man named Osawa (Takishi Kakizawa), who is seen taking pigeons into his apartment and who then disappears. Hori covers himself in tin foil and is clearly disturbed, but also clearly connected to something otherworldly.
What Noroi has going for it is an incredibly strong narrative that is put together in a way to build slowly and consistently over time. While this is definitely a supernatural tale, it’s also a movie that is about a terrible mystery. As the audience, we are consistently given just enough information to keep us interested in what is happening. As horror movie viewers, things are kept just disturbing enough to keep us on the edge of the seat.
I don’t always love found footage movies, but if they were more like Noroi, I’d be a bigger fan. Most of the time, when someone tries to have things both ways—a horror comedy that is both scary and funny, for instance, the audience is left with the realization that the resulting film is neither. Noroi wants to be found footage but also tell an edited story that reveals information slowly and tells a story in a traditional way. And it pulls it off, which is noteworthy if nothing else about the film was. The fact that it’s a wild and interesting story only makes it all the better.
Why to watch Noroi: The Curse: It’s genuinely upsetting in all of the right ways.
Why not to watch: It still has all of the problems of found footage.
I'm iffy about found footage films as you never know which one is good or which one is not.
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