The Kurosawa You May Never Have Heard Of

New York Times

19-07-2025

'Who are you?' the enigmatic young man central to Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 1997 breakthrough horror thriller, 'Cure,' repeatedly asks. He's been accused of hypnotizing people and prompting them to commit gruesome murders.
That deceptively simple question might be the paramount concern in the cinema of Kurosawa, the prolific Japanese filmmaker whose unnerving, genre-defying films are often preoccupied with questioning or revealing the true identity of their characters — to us and to them.
One could say that Kurosawa is to psychological fright what David Cronenberg is to body horror.
In 'Charisma' (1999), about a detective stranded in a rural community obsessed with a singular tree, he asks what makes some people special and others just ordinary. In 'Cure' (streaming on the Criterion Channel), he ponders whether the victims of hypnosis are innate killers or coerced puppets. And in his chilling 2001 internet ghost story 'Pulse' (streaming on Tubi), his young characters wonder if they are alone or just lonely.
In each of these narratives, the weight of society influences the individual. Kurosawa seems perpetually interested in that tug of war between our free will and the status quo. The supernatural or eerie elements often read like catalysts that incite an inner reckoning.
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