Review #251: Noroi: the Curse (2005)

This review was originally written in October 2023.

Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #5 - Noroi: The Curse (2005)

I had never seen this film, though I'd definitely heard it named in lists of "best horror films of all time" and I'm certain at least one or two video games I've played counted this among their chief inspirations. So I guess I had high hopes going in, even if I didn't know what exactly to expect.

Noroi: The Curse is a Japanese found-footage film about a documentary filmmaker, Masafumi Kobayashi, investigating paranormal happenings around Japan. The movie starts with title cards explaining that during the production of his latest documentary Kobayashi's house burned down and his body was never found, so the stage is set for a twisted, spooky tale leading up to something terrifying happening to him and his family. We're introduced to a handful of characters, many of whom have psychic connections to spirits, and the plot eventually revolves around a flooded village's yearly ritual that summoned a demon but never sent him back whence he came.

I'll get this right out there: I didn't really care for this film. It started off strong, with an interesting found-footage style where the footage we see appeared to be largely collected from various TV broadcasts, interspersed with Kobayashi's footage in order to draw connections between the events. But by the middle of the film, it was pretty much just Kobayashi's footage for the rest of the runtime, which was pretty bog standard as far as found-footage movies are concerned. This film is also a pretty slow burn, with most of its runtime just gently plodding a bit closer to whatever event prompted the title card at the beginning. Now, I can't confidently state that this was any better or worse than other found-footage movies at the time- and I'd definitely say that it didn't quite fall into the same trap most modern ones do where the first 70 minutes is ultimately pointless as the director just spins the movie's metaphorical wheels until enough time has passed for it to be okay to usher in the climax- but I'm watching it for the first time today and I just didn't feel this one did anything that really made it stand apart. There were a couple noteworthy scares (the part where the video glitches out during Hori's psychic episode and the camera instead captures what looks like a pile of skulls was genuinely upsetting, as was the similar moment near the end when the camera's night vision captures an apparition of Kana with a pile of tiny ghost beings crawling around her) but again, this movie just felt like another found-footage movie in an era where those are a dime a dozen. It was interesting, more interesting than average, but not THAT much more.

I'm glad I saw this movie (I have a lot of horror films on the list for this month that are from other countries, which I think is a good thing) but I still maintain that it didn't quite live up to the hype.

Overall Rating: 6/10 Ritual Claps

Possible Connection/Inspiration: I'm not 100% positive, but the appearance of the demon Kagutaba's face in this film really looks to me like it was inspired by the Kodama, or forest spirits, from the anime film Princess Mononoke. (Or they were both inspired by the same thing, I couldn't find an origin for either.) There's a point in Noroi where they sort of go back and forth on whether Kagutaba is a demon or just some other kind of entity that may not always have been malicious, so in my mind it's possible that at one point it was a harmless nature spirit that got upset at the valley being flooded. I'll stick with that for my headcanon, anyway.