“No matter how terrifying, I want the truth.”
The best found-footage movies make you feel as though you’re watching something you should not be seeing. That’s the point of the genre, right? To fully immerse the viewer in the story, free of the professional sheen of studio films and the comforting presence of big-name actors. At their best, Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project achieve this sensation. But films like those are few and far between. Noroi: The Curse might be the best found-footage movie ever made. Its use of documentary footage and clips from game shows and the news are perfectly utilized to create a narrative, and the way in which they are filmed is the most believable I’ve ever seen. This is a long way of saying that Noroi is so well-made that it seems authentic.
The film follows journalist Masafumi Kobayashi, who has made a name for himself investigating paranormal phenomena. He speaks to a woman who says that she’s been hearing the sounds of crying babies, but her neighbor is in her forties and has a son of about 6. Kobayashi talks to the neighbor, a woman named Junko Ishii, who acts offended and insulted by his knocking on the door and just overall existence. It seems like a small but strange moment, but it sets into motion a mystery involving an actual demon.
One reason Noroi works so well is that Japan, as a whole, is a more spiritual country than America. Not more religious, mind you, but ephemeral things like luck, demons, and ghosts are taken as reality. When an actress guest-stars on a show about ghost hunting and says she’s a psychic, we believe she is; when a televised special shows ten children with ESP being tested on their abilities, we believe that they have them, because the film has taught us to. Such is the spell that Noroi casts; we believe that the veil between our world and the one beyond is thin to the point of nonexistence.
The performances help a lot as well. I wouldn’t go so far as to use superlatives like “terrific” or “incredible,” but that’s a complaint. All the actors feel like real people; their performances are naturalistic and lived-in. We sympathize with these people because they feel like actual people. And Noroi avoids the pitfall of many found-footage movies, by which I mean the moment at which it becomes impossible to believe that anyone would keep filming. Kobayashi is a journalist with a cameraman; he can’t stop filming. The inclusion of footage other than Kobayashi’s is an ingenious choice, one that American filmmakers seem reluctant to make. In that way, Noroi isn’t a found-footage film but rather a compiled-footage film.
There are no jump scares in Noroi: The Curse; in fact, for all of its excellence, it isn’t the scariest film we’ve watched this month. If you’re looking to be scared out of your wits, maybe watch The Exorcist instead. But Noroi cultivates such an elevated sense of inescapable dread that you always feel as though something horrible is about to happen. Lots of characters seem to die or disappear after meeting Kobayashi, and we learn he has incurred the wrath of a demon called Kagutaba. The whole atmosphere of the film is that of something wrong, like a warped, unholy version of the world.
There are some things that, as humans, we are just not supposed to see. Noroi: The Curse puts them on the screen. It’s a terrifying, unsettling modern folk tale imbued with today’s technology (well, 2005’s technology). The imagery is cursed and unforgettable, the story admirably bleak and fatalistic. Some horror movies you feel under your skin. This one you feel in your soul.
Thursday, 10/1: Phantasm
Friday, 10/2: Frozen
Saturday, 10/3: Suspiria
Sunday, 10/4: Suspiria (2018)
Monday, 10/5: Emelie
Tuesday, 10/6: Castle Freak
Wednesday, 10/7: Session 9
Thursday, 10/8: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
Friday, 10/9: We Are Still Here
Saturday, 10/10: The Changeling
Sunday, 10/11: The Bad Seed
Monday, 10/12: Verotika
Tuesday, 10/13: The Legend of Hell House
Wednesday, 10/14: Lake Mungo
Thursday, 10/15: Puppetmaster
Friday, 10/16: Marrowbone
Saturday, 10/17: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Sunday, 10/18: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
Monday, 10/19: Sweetheart
Tuesday, 10/20: Girl On the Third Floor
Wednesday, 10/21: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
Thursday, 10/22: Triangle
Friday, 10/23: Dog Soldiers
Saturday, 10/24: Noroi: The Curse
Sunday, 10/25: Train to Busan
Monday, 10/26: Tales From the Hood
Tuesday, 10/27: Mandy
Wednesday, 10/28: Sometimes They Come Back
Thursday, 10/29: Veronica
Friday, 10/30: The Wicker Man
Saturday, 10/31: Child’s Play
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