Review: Cure is a strange thriller bordering on the psychological. Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa who is well known for such films as Charisma, Séance and the immensely popular Kairo. This director is not afraid to experiment and thus his films has an interesting style to them. Often difficult to understand and filled with a general eerie atmosphere, Cure is no exception to this. Kurosawa's style of film making is both good and bad, while the movie is often a brilliant piece of work it is hard to appreciate and understand. In Cure you have a strange story and the behavior of the characters is puzzling, as for the ending it is rather obscure. This is a movie that makes you think and requires some deep analysis as the true meanings are never apparent.

The focus of the movie is on detective Takabe who is also the main character in Charisma. In addition you have many other important characters involved in the story but most of them are really there to move the story along. Takabe starts off what seems like a 2 dimensional character and soon becomes 3D, by that I mean there is a lot of depth. The character development is someone obscure and hard to understand but it symbolizes many things. In effect you can consider all the main characters as symbolizing something. The villain in this movie is especially strange, by far one of the strangest characters we have seen. He is harmlessly terrifying, you will understand when you see him.

There is not much action to Cure, in fact like most of Kurosawa's films it is very slow. This movie is far from regular entertainment, it is a movie that requires thought. After we saw this movie we found it not that exciting but the more we thought about it the more it worked in out minds. This is something that really needs to be watched twice to really have a better understanding. Generally most people will find this movie very slow and most might not like it.