The Film (4/5)

    Kiyoshi Kurosawa had been making films for close to 20 years when Cure brought him what could be considered his first taste of international acclaim. The film is essentially a crime thriller, with dark horror overtones, and helped in many ways to bring in the J-Horror trend that came in the late 90's and early 2000's alongside films like Ring and Audition. Cure, alongside Pulse could also very well be considered Kurosawa's best known films, however, it had yet to see a Blu-ray release outside of Japan. Eureka's Masters of Cinema line has seen right to fix that with their May 2018 release of the film.

    Cure is involved with the investigation of detective Kenichi Takabe. He is following a rash of murders that are almost "too" easily explained. The murderers are almost always at the scene of the crime, and their victims almost always have a huge X which cuts through their major arteries across their chest, though that usually is not what caused their deaths.  The murders are not related, and the killers, seemingly had no motive. Takabe is perplexed, until one day a person is sighted at the scene of two of the murders. He is brought in, but is an enigma to the police, including Takabe, and his partner Sakuma. It turns out that this man Mamiya is a hypnotist, who has been working his way deep into the psyches of people he meets and makes them commit murder, and now it is hard to tell if he has infiltrated the minds of Sakuma and Takabe.

    Cure is a film that lures the viewer in right away with a shocking scene or murder that is not gory and over the top, but shows enough to get a viewer's attention. In fact, that is how Kurosawa displays most of the murders in the film off screen, but with enough detail to make the whole affair shocking. He uses other  distinct imagery in conjunction with the horror of the situation to keep the viewer's hypnotized in a way. This in conjunction with the ambient sound design which has a hypnotic and slightly disturbing undercurrent to it.   The film also seemingly takes place in a dark and dingy world that helps to set it apart from a place where normal things happen.  The performances across the board are more subtle in nature except Kôji Yakusho which is more dynamic.

    It has been about 15 years since I have seen Cure, and it holds up every bit as well as I remember. It's as creepy a thriller as the first time I saw it, and I know it will not be as long as between viewings.

Audio/Video (3/5)

    Eureka presents Cure in a 1:85:1 1080p AVC encoded transfer that looks decent, but largely unremarkable.  Cure is a dingy looking film as I commented in the prior section, and the transfer reflects that, but like a lot of Japanese and Asian films in general, sadly, the transfer here appears to have been taken from a dated master, so while this edition as a whole looks solid, it looks softer in motion then I would have imagined a newer transfer would have appeared. Detail is decent, blacks are mostly solid, colors reflect the overall look of the film.

    Audio is handled by an LPCM track in Japanese. The audio is surprisingly the best thing about this edition. It is well balanced, and comes through speakers quite well, and helps give the film the disturbing ambiance it truly needs. It also comes through nice, and clear, and without issues.

Extras (2.5/5)

    We get interviews with Kiyoshi Kurosawa,  and also an interview with horror expert Kim Newman. There is also a theatrical trailer, and a booklet of liner notes by Tom Mes.

Overall

    Cure is one of the best films to come out of the Asian horror boom of the early 2000’s, and it is fantastic to finally have the film on Blu-ray. The visuals aren’t perfect, but are an upgrade from older DVD editions, but the sound is fantastic. There is also a solid extras slate. RECOMMENDED.