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Review Mandi Apple, 2008.Directed by Koji Shiraishi, 2005, 115
mins. starring Masafumi Kobayashi, Marika Matsumoto, Maria
Takagi,Mitsuo Hori and Rio Kanno.
Previously known rather unfortunately for the mediocre
J-horror-by-numbers scavenge-fest Ju-Rei: TheUncanny - but latterly
also for the rather better Kuchisake-onna (aka Carved) - Koji
Shiraishi's least-known, butprobably best-loved, work is Noroi: The
Curse. Why it is still low-profile is anyone's guess, given the
quality ofthis movie: it just seems, like some other really good
Asian horrors, to have slipped quietly under the radar ofthe wider
Western audience. Koji Shiraishi does have a history of making
these kinds of noroi movies, withvarying degrees of success- both
Ju-Rei and 2003's Honto ni Atta! Noroi Bideo come straight from the
MostHaunted bargain-bucket of ghost mockumentaries, but with the
added twist of supposedly cursing the viewerof said movies, just
like Sadako and her Betamax of Doom ;-)
Thematically based on the popular phenomenon of shinrei shashin
and shinrei bideo (so-called "real" ghostphotography and video
footage), Noroi, unlike other similarly-themed contemporary Asian
movies (for exampleShutter), employs the cinema verit shakycam
mockumentary style to put its point across. And it would be alltoo
easy to classify Noroi as the Japanese answer to the Blair Witch
Project, that great touchstone ofshakycam spook horror. Its basic
plot bears an uncanny resemblance to that movie: a missing
documentarymaker leaving behind a tape which appears to explain his
disappearance due to supernatural reasons...? Thissounding familiar
to anyone?
And as you might expect from the director of Ju-Rei, Noroi does
indeed feature a small grab-bag of thievery,borrowing liberally
from the big names - the mother/son tag-team combo from Ju-on
replete with spectralcat-like noises, super-psychic little girls
doing ESP tests, cursed technology from Ring and Phone andChakushin
ari and how many other bloody titles besides, I don't even
know.
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So yeah, yeah, yeah, much of Noroi is derivative. We all got
that ;-) But in the case of this movie, for once itdoesn't actually
matter. Not even a little bit. It didn't make me groan out loud and
facepalm as other suchtitles that borrow elements of contemporary
big names often do, because Koji Shiraishi takes those
elements,changes their significance and weaves them integrally into
a completely original plot. Even though the BlairWitch comparison
is an accurate one, for my money Noroi is far, far more scary than
that particular movie -and it's the very fact that it is really and
properly frightening which is the movie's best salvation. The
entiremood of the piece changes by subtle stages throughout the
duration, from light-hearted cheesy TV MostHaunted-type fluff,
through masterfully-handled escalating dread, to a terrifying
series of climactic eventsthat will remain with you long after the
film ends.
Happily there is a large amount of original material which is
not only good and creepy from a contemporarypoint of view, and like
many very effective Japanese horror movies it draws heavily upon
its own country'scultural and ancient traditions. Noroi writes its
own rich demonic mythology in much the same way Ring did,combining
horror elements from the past and the present to great effect, but
without actually replicating itnote for note with bog-standard girl
ghosts and TVs and wells and what have you. There is, mark you, a
verysmart (and possibly sarcastic) little nod to Ring near the end,
with the appearance of a smashed-in TV screen ;-)
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Synopsis
"I want the truth. No matter how terrifying, I want the
truth."
Masafumi Kobayashi is a leading paranormal journalist, TV
presenter and expert who is a familiar and well-loved celebrity in
his field. However, since investigating a phenomenon known simply
as Noroi (in English, 'thecurse'), it seems that someone - or more
likely something - very nasty has it in for Kobayashi. First off,
the dayafter his investigation began, his home burned to the ground
in the middle of the night, killing his wife, whoseremains were
found in the debris; and Kobayashi himself has been declared
missing. All that is left of him is hisNoroi investigation tape, in
true Blair Witch style. So despite an assertion made by the
voiceover announcerthat the documentary left behind is too
disturbing to be seen by the public, it appears we're going to
beallowed to see it after all. How kind! Noroi would have been a
very short film otherwise ;-)
The investigation begins in November 2002, with Kobayashi
interviewing a young mother and her littledaughter, who have been
hearing the sounds of crying babies coming from the house next door
to theirs. Theoccupants of said house are a mysterious 40-year-old
woman and a small boy of about 5-6, who hasn't beenseen since the
pair moved in, and who are most definitely not Kayako and Toshio,
no sir ;-)
So Kobayashi goes next door to ask them some questions, and
right from the outset it appears that the motherisn't quite all
there. She looks terrible, and starts being really hostile right
from the get-go. She yells atKobayashi and slams the door in his
face, and he retreats in a hurry - but not before his eagle-eyed
cameramanspots the little boy's face peering out of the back
window. However, along with this unsettling image, thecameraman
also records a peculiar sound.
Kobayashi is excited by this finding, and takes the tape to be
analysed. What he discovers is that the next-doorneighbour was bang
on about the noises coming from the house: it turns out to be the
sound of more than fivebabies crying at the same time. But when he
goes back to investigate again, he finds out that the twomysterious
occupants of the house have moved out - taking the weird noises
with them. On rifling throughtheir leftover mail, he finds out that
the woman's name is Junko Ishii but he makes a slightly more
disturbingdiscovery round the back of the house, where he turns up
a bunch of dead mutilated pigeons. Later, ittranspires that the
next-door neighbours who reported the noises wound up dead five
days after Kobayashi'sreturn, due to a seemingly unconnected car
crash.
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The next part of the documentary shows an ESP test run on
supposedly psychic children for TV, which revealsthat one of the
ten children being tested, Kana Yano (Rio Kanno), is extremely
clairvoyant and manages toreproduce a drawing of a hidden shape
perfectly. However, despite getting the first four shape-drawing
testscorrect, on the fifth she suddenly draws a weird face with
huge black eyesockets - which bears no resemblanceto the actual
hidden drawing. And weirder still, when she is asked to materialise
some water in a bottle by thepower of thought alone, she does so -
and floating inside the bottle, is also a hair, which turns out
underanalysis to have come from the head of a newborn baby.
The next chunk of evidence shows unused footage from another TV
programme, showing a pair of male psychicinvestigators calling
themselves the 'Ungirls' and a real actress, Marika Matsumoto (who
also starred that yearin Takashi Shimizu's Rinne), on their merry
way to check out a haunted shrine where many ghosts have
beensighted. Marika confesses to being psychic and having seen
ghosts before, hence wanting to come along.However, everything goes
horribly wrong, and something inexplicable happens to Marika,
causing her to rollabout on the floor screaming.
Kobayashi interviews Marika about it at a live horror show
evening, and she says she doesn't rememberanything about the
incident except for hearing a man's voice calling her. But after a
tinfoil-hatted psychicnutter guest, Mitsuo Hori, who is apparently
involved in important work "protecting humans from
ectoplasmicworms" (no, I don't know either ;-)) goes mental and
tries to strangle Marika, whilst shouting "My God! Thepigeons!
Watch out for the pigeons!", Kobayashi makes another mental
connection - this time between themutilated pigeons he saw at the
mystery baby-sound house and what the psychic picked up from
Marika. Onfurther investigation by Kobayashi, it transpires that a
ghost figure appeared behind Marika on the tape of theunused
footage of the haunted shrine, which the TV show editor
thoughtfully removed so as not to freak thepoor girl out: a tall,
white shape with huge black eyesockets and a wonky mouth, just like
the same face thatthe child psychic Kana Yano drew in her televised
fifth ESP test. Speaking of whom, Kana herself has justdisappeared
without trace.
Unfortunately, it would seem the only person who knows anything
about Kana's disappearance is the tinfoil-hatloony "super psychic",
Mitsuo Hori. Despite his terror, he gives Kobayashi the name of the
figure behind it all -Kagutaba - and draws a map of Kana's current
location, which Kobayashi will have to follow up if he has
anychance of finding out what's going on.
It's become clear that this mysterious figure Kagutaba is the
single connection between all these frighteningphenomena - but what
is it, and what is it doing? Why is everyone connected with this
investigation eitherdisappearing or dying? And will Kobayashi be
able to protect himself against whatever is happening as he
getsdrawn deeper and deeper into the mystery? (Well... no. We
already established that at the start ;-) But we'llget to find out
why, never you worry about that...)
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Make no mistake, Noroi is a really, really, really good movie.
It is not half as formulaic as you may fear: OK, soit's not
reinventing the wheel, but does every movie have to? Its greatest
strength is the simple fact that it isintensely effective and
creepy, with plenty of originality and pure enjoyment to be had
from it to keep it fromjust being a spot-the-stolen-movie movie. On
a purely entertainment level, it's very enjoyable - and you
caneasily turn a blind eye to the *ahem* influenced bits. There are
some deeply unsettling moments, includingseveral terrifying
sequences near the end that gave even this hardened old genre
reviewer more than a fewgoosebumps. The storyline is well-paced and
very engaging, and the acting is uniformly excellent:
MasafumiKobayashi and Marika Matsumoto are very likeable characters
who the viewer can warm to and care about, andthe rest of the
supporting cast are pretty good too, especially Mitsuo Hori, who
starts off as a thoroughlyobnoxious, almost comical character and
ends up becoming incredibly important to the plot - and
evensympathetic. Now that is deft characterisation.
So in summary: if you don't crap yourself by the end of Noroi,
then chances are that you're dead inside and noamount of horror
movies will ever scare you. This, my friends, is what "J-horror"
should be all about: gettingback to making you, the viewer, soil
yourself spontaneously through a combination of terrifying
mythology,dread-soaked atmospherics, psychological suspense and
properly scary ideas and images. And Noroi has all thatgood stuff
in spades, along with the bonus of not one, but two of the most
terrifying ending sequences ever -twice as many as Ring, even! Do
not let prejudice and suspicion put you off: Noroi is an essential
and perfectlyconstructed essay on how to make a fantastic modern
Asian horror movie.
Snowblood Apple Rating for this film:
Entertainment Value: 9/10Chills: 9/10Acting: 10/10. Absolutely
cannot fault it Sex: 0/10 Fire: Bad Tinfoil: 10/10 Ectoplasmic
Worms: sounds painful Night Vision Scares: 1 ginormous one. Now
THAT is how you do night vision scares, Yvette Fielding! Are
youtaking notes? ;-)
Films in a Similar Style: Blair Witch Project, Shutter, Ring,
Ju-on
*** Highly recommended ***
Discuss this movie here at the Snowblood Apple Forums!
Noroi Wallpaperplease note: the actual paper does not have the
Snowblood Apple logo on it.
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You can download this wallpaper here: [800x600] [1024x768]
Wallpaper credit: Alex Apple, 2008
Snowblood Apple Filmographies
Koji ShiraishiMarika MatsumotoMaria Takagi
Links
(Amazingly, I could not find one single proper review of this
movie on the Net, so I couldn't link to any - sorryabout that
O_O)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A5VNsEeAMY - trailer on
Youtubehttp://www.walkerplus.com/phtml/all/movie/flyer/index.cgi?file=mo3644_f1.jpgimdb
- poster at
MoviePlushttp://twitchfilm.net/site/view/noroi-gets-an-english-subtitled-hk-dvd-december-15th-2006/
- Twitchthinks Rinne is better, scarier and less generic fare than
Noroi. Pfffffft, make your own mind up on that one, Iknow what I
think ;-)http://cinema.3yen.com/2005-08-23/noroi/ - an interesting
thought on the Japanese perception of ghosts
http://www2.plala.or.jp/ivjkiz/sada/ - some lovely Japanese shinrei
shashin photos to get you in the
moodhttp://www5a.biglobe.ne.jp/~fnao/shinrei_pic.htm - ... and a
link to show you how to fake some shinreishashin of your very own!
;-)
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