Cure (1997)
My second favorite Kurosawa after Pulse (possibly counting both directors bearing the name, I'd need to rewatch a couple from the more famous one). I liked this a tiny bit more on a rewatch (the rating remains the same, though), as the odd main antagonist didn't draw so much of my attention. He's a kind of annoying interpretation of the abyss staring back at you.
What Cure does the best is evoking a feeling that something is terribly wrong with the world. It has this cold, Lovecraftian feel to it. To understand is to go insane. The whole film seems to be about projecting this unsettling emptiness beyond human understanding, and I assume the film only gets better the more you can ignore the police procedural as a conventional story and embrace the cosmic horror beyond.
My second favorite Kurosawa after Pulse (possibly counting both directors bearing the name, I'd need to rewatch a couple from the more famous one). I liked this a tiny bit more on a rewatch (the rating remains the same, though), as the odd main antagonist didn't draw so much of my attention. He's a kind of annoying interpretation of the abyss staring back at you.
What Cure does the best is evoking a feeling that something is terribly wrong with the world. It has this cold, Lovecraftian feel to it. To understand is to go insane. The whole film seems to be about projecting this unsettling emptiness beyond human understanding, and I assume the film only gets better the more you can ignore the police procedural as a conventional story and embrace the cosmic horror beyond.