This is a really terrifying found footage picture, only comparable to similar films like The Blair Witch Project or Rec, and is produced by Takashige Ichise (Takaashi-ge-Ichi-se), the same guy who created previous Japanese horror successes like Grudge and Ring. Despite great critical reception, the movie went unnoticed since the production company was on the edge of bankruptcy, making promotion exceedingly difficult.
It starts with a disclaimer that the next documentary’s content is too distressing for public viewing. Isn’t that why we’ve come here? To be disturbed, to have the chills of dread go down our spines, and to be afraid because that’s what we enjoy!
It is made clear in the opening that the narrative is going to revolve around the adventures or misadventures of a paranormal researcher named Masafumi Kobayashi. So, without further ado, let’s cut to the chase and deep dive into this awesome horror film.
Since 1995, Kobayashi has been recording supernatural events and has written multiple books on what he has learnt from his encounters. His day job was to investigate insoluble and terrifying riddles, and he accumulated reports of weird happenings and phenomena in the process.
Kobayashi relied solely on verbal declarations and written records as he began this unusual quest. He was able to capture and combine his studies into cassettes after obtaining a video camera. In the early days of April 2004, Kobayashi completed The Curse, his latest and possibly final documentary.
But in an odd turn of events, on the night of April 12th, his house got burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances. Once the fire was doused, under the rubble and ruins was the charred remains of his wife Keiko, but Kobayashi was nowhere to be found, and the authorities declared him missing.
Kobayashi had vanished under these inexplicable circumstances, but The Curse was discovered in the house and its contents revealed the horrific truth about his latest project and his subsequent disappearance.
The narrator’s impersonal, monotone voice perfectly sets the tone of the film; it gives us the impression that whatever comes next will be serious and terrible. Plato once said that the beginning is the most important part of the work. Director Kōji Shiraishi took it pretty seriously, and for good reasons.
Shiraishi shows us clips from the video documentary without wasting any time. It began on November 12th, 2002, when Kobayashi visited a quiet Tokyo suburb. He meets up with Ryoko Okui and her kid, who have been hearing strange noises from a neighbouring house.
Miss Ryoko thinks she hears noises that sound like a baby’s cries, but she isn’t sure. She shows Kobayashi the home of a 40-year-old mother and her small boy. They have only lived there for around six months, and Ryoko had been hearing voices for two months, implying that something dreadful had happened in the interim.
Strangely enough, Ryoko only saw the boy when they moved in and never since. The boy’s mother doesn’t let him out, and she herself is not what we can call a social butterfly. She doesn’t even greet her neighbors. Kobayashi leaves Ryoko’s apartment and attempts to visit the weird woman’s home. He knocks on the door, and a pale-looking lady appears. Her empty eyes were powerful enough to look deep into that of the viewers.
The woman lost her cool when Kobayashi made up a tale about being interested in some study and needing a few minutes of her time. She slammed the door in his face, his impassive face suddenly filled with rage and hatred. He and the camera person left the apartment, and while walking away, the camera caught the first glimpse of the little boy who was peeking through the window.
Kobayashi had managed to capture the sound on camera and had taken it to a sonic analyzer for analysis. The expert disclosed, much to Kobayashi’s surprise and dismay, that the audio represented the sobbing of at least five newborns. Kobayashi didn’t waste time and went to meet Miss Ryoko, who informed him that the weird lady and her son moved away soon after Kobayashi visited them.
When he arrived at their house, he rummaged among the rubbish and discovered Junko Ishii’s name. He also discovered numerous dead birds in the backyard. After filming everything, Kobayashi said his goodbyes to Ryoko and her kid. However, the camera zooms in on the innocent mother-daughter duo, and it is revealed that they died five days later in a bizarre car accident.
Surprisingly, Noroi does not use the traditional discovered footage format. It has the feel of a documentary, with pictures that aren’t so wobbly that they give you a headache.
The camerawork is excellent, and the most thrilling aspect may be the zooming in of the camera at key moments. This sort of cinematography provides us a narrative with layers of storytelling, and this makes up for the film’s strength. Noroi believes in both telling and showing, which is in stark contrast to the other found footage flicks of contemporary times.
The documentary moves to a reality TV programme dated August 2003 after the event with the pale woman and Ryoko. It features a group of youngsters sitting with a psychic named Koichi Hirotsu, who then tests the children’s clairvoyance capabilities.
He hands each of them a little container containing a white sheet of paper with a drawing on it. The kids are instructed to imagine and sketch the picture within the container on their own.
Kana was the only girl who could draw exactly the same drawings as the ones in the containers, but she got the last one incorrect. While the container had Russian alphabets, she drew a grotesque and disfigured face. The following exercise was to materialize water into an empty glass jar.
Kana did it again, but this time she had managed to materialize a hair strand as well. The tests on the water revealed that the water was from a freshwater lake or some other aqueous body, and the hair might be from an animal or a newborn baby.
Kobayashi goes to interview Kana’s parents, and her mother tells him that she has been spending a lot of time in bed, sleeping. Furthermore, she has been keeping ill, though the doctor failed to diagnose any disease.
Noroi’s various subplots are another important factor in its popularity. There are so many various things that happen in the movie, and they all link and fit together like a jigsaw puzzle at the end. Kobayashi specializes in chasing these threads and connecting the dots. And each of the events invokes dread, suspense, and thrill. Let’s see what happens next.
The documentary’s following segment features video from a previously unseen and unaired reality TV show. It follows two guys and a lady named Marika Matsumoto as they travel to a prominent temple known for its ghost sightings.
Marika now has a sixth sense and has had supernatural experiences such as seeing ghosts and apparitions since she was a youngster. When they get to the shrine, Marika senses an evil presence.
She hears a faint male voice, but the others don’t hear anything. The camera stopped shooting as she collapsed to the ground, crying in pain. Marika survived the incident and appeared in a live interview to talk about the experience.
To test Marika’s state of mind and her psychic abilities, the organizers called another psychic named Mitsuo Hori. Apparently, he was involved in things like protecting humans from ectoplasmic worms. However, Mitsuo attacked Marika and attempted to kill her and screamed the word pigeons while he did so.
Jin Muraki as Masafumi Kobayashi and Marika Matsumoto as Herself were unquestionably well cast and delivered spectacular performances. However, the undervalued star of the show has to be Satoru Jitsunashi as Mitsuo Hori; he depicted a psycho psychic with such precision and perfection that his character felt nothing short of authentic.
Kobayashi visits the director of the reality TV programme where Marika had her encounter with the creature. He revealed a portion of the tape to Kobayashi that no one else had seen. It featured an apparition standing behind Marika, with a face that resembled Kana’s drawing.
The recording is subsequently shown to Marika by Kobayashi. She tells him that since the incident, she has unconsciously been drawing strange patterns of concentric circles. Kobayashi goes to meet Kana’s family once again, where her mother informs him that she has been talking to someone that no one can see. Later that day, Kana loses control over her telekinesis.
The documentary’s following segment is from December 9th, 2003. Maria, a guest on a reality TV show, went to see a super psychic and taped the encounter. This was the same individual who had assaulted Marika earlier.
The guy claimed to have received dire warnings from beyond the stars. However, determining whether he was a psychic or merely deluded was incredibly difficult. On the 22nd of December, Kobayashi went to see Kana’s parents, and we found out that Kana had vanished. Our mysterious super psychic paid Kana a visit around the time of her abduction.
Kobayashi’s parents showed him a photo leaflet from Kana’s room that resembled her abductor’s work. Furthermore, she drew the same patterns as Marika did in her unconscious state. Kobayashi goes to meet the super psychic, Hori, and enquires about Kana’s disappearance.
After much drama, Hori uses his powers to make an image of a blue building with galvanized railings. Basically, it was the apartment of a young man. Hori briefly mentions the word Kagutaba before going into a state of utter frenzy, after which point Kobayashi leaves. His cameraman tells him that just before Hori mentioned Kagutaba, the camera recorded bizarre pictures of a bunch of weird faces, similar to what Kana and Marika had drawn.
Kobayashi began searching for the house that Hori had mentioned, but was interrupted by a phone call from Marika. When he came to see Marika, she showed him the braided loops she had woven in her sleep using wool.
Kobayashi installed a camera in her room, which captured the incident as it unfolded. They both hear a pounding noise in Marika’s apartment and walk upstairs to check, but the girl who lives there claims she wasn’t banging the floor or hearing anything.
Kobayashi resumed his hunt for the flat, which he eventually discovered. A young and weird man named Osawa lived there, but he vanished after a few days. Osawa’s neighbor revealed that he heard knocking noise from the apartment, similar to what they heard in Marika’s.
Meanwhile, Kobayashi begins researching the word Kagutaba and contacts a number of linguists with his inquiry. The history of Kagutaba was disclosed by a grammatical specialist. A village called Shimokage (Shimo-Kaage) existed near the town of Shikamimachi in Tokita county, but it was now destroyed by a dam.
The villagers had a ritual to pacify an ancient demon named Kagutaba. According to the expert, a group of sorcerers from the west had traveled to Japan and summoned the monster to win over their enemies, but eventually, it went out of control and started wreaking havoc. This was when the ritual started.
Kobayashi was now on the lookout for any hints about the Shimokage Village’s ceremonial rituals. In contrast to Hollywood films that portray orientals as mystical beings, the film portrays westerners as sorcerers and witchcraft practitioners. Anyway, Kobayashi met a local history researcher who happened to have a video clip of the final ceremony performed to test Kagutaba’s powers.
The rite was observed by Kobayashi. The demon Kagutaba’s visage looked exactly like what Marika and Kana had sketched, and the shrine where the ceremony was held was the same one where Marika had encountered the evil thing.
Kobayashi wanted to talk with the priest who had done the pacifying rite, but both he and his wife had died, leaving only a daughter behind. The daughter had returned from Tokyo with her son and was residing nearby, according to a guy.
He noticed swarms of braided loops, identical to the ones Marika had been forming while sleeping. It turned out that the daughter of the priest was the same woman, Junko Ishii, who Kobayashi had visited at the beginning of the film. But you already guessed that, didn’t you?
Moving on, no one in the village wanted to provide any information to Kobayashi about Ishii, and some even warned him to stay away from her. But he managed to find one of Junko’s old friends who agreed to help.
Junko had moved to Tokyo to study nursing, but after the sacrament, she had changed from a jolly, friendly girl to a crazy lady. In an eerie turn of events, the lady abruptly stopped talking, stood up, and went inside the house.
Kobayashi went back to Tokyo to learn more about Junko and her experiences as a nurse. One of her previous coworkers informed him that she used to work at an obstetric clinic and was a little creepy, despite her great job. Furthermore, the facility performed unlawful abortions as late as the 22nd week of pregnancy.
Junko Ishii was rumoured to have taken the aborted embryos home instead of disposing of them, according to a coworker. On February 6th, Kobayashi contacted Marika, who informed him that Midori, his upstairs neighbour, had committed mass suicide by hanging herself in a park.
The incident left Marika shocked, and Kobayashi allowed her to stay at his home with his wife, Keiko. Kobayashi is doing all he can to not only solve the mystery, but to also help an innocent girl. Among the people who committed suicide was the guy from the blue building.
His neighbor revealed that he used to have a lot of arguments with another neighbor, a middle-aged woman who had a 5 to 6-year-old son. The young man would complain about the baby being too noisy, but the woman had no babies. It is revealed that the woman was none other than Junko Ishii. Meanwhile, news reports said that Kana’s father killed his wife.
Marika became astonished and collapsed on the floor at Kobayashi and Keiko’s house. She moaned in a horrible voice just before passing out, as though she was in pain. Pigeons also fly towards the window, crash against it, and break their necks.
Kobayashi reassures her by telling her that he’ll talk with Junko Ishii again, and that the mystery will be solved. Marika remembered that Hori, the psychic, had warned against pigeons.
She believes this was a sign of imminent death, and they decide to visit the psychic together. By this point, it has become very difficult to believe what we are seeing. There’s always a possibility that Marika is hiding something, or maybe she’s simply the innocent victim of an elaborate conspiracy.
They eventually meet Hori and show him Junko Ishii’s tape; Hori becomes scared and almost sobs when he sees Junko. They don’t get any answers from Hori, so Marika asks Kobayashi to drive her to the dam so she may execute the rite alone.
Kobayashi was hesitant at first, but when he saw there was no other option, he chose to grant Marika’s desire. Hori, on the other hand, was invited to the dam so that he might add his psychic abilities to the rite.
They travel to the dam and board a boat to the exact location of the rite. Marika did it, and everything seemed to go smoothly. Hori, who was gone at the bridge, began to fear, prompting Marika and Kobayashi to return.
Hori and Kobayashi raced up the slope to find Kana. Marika, who was in the car with the cameraperson, got anxious and displayed indications of possession, such as moaning. She attacked him and fled deep into the forest.
Meanwhile, Kobayashi and Hori happened upon a ritualistic site with all the village dogs’ throats slit. They were getting closer to a shrine situated inside a dense jungle. Kobayashi caught a ghastly sight of numerous writhing fetuses around Kana’s spirit; they were all crawling towards her and climbing on her.
Marika abruptly recovered from her spell of possession and became confused as to where she was. So, it is certain that Kana is dead, and the fetuses have to do something with Junko Ishii. But, the mystery is still far from solved.
One of the most terrifying parts in the film is Kana’s encounter with the foetuses. Noroi, for the most part, exploits a tight atmosphere and ominous tension to instil terror in the spectators’ hearts and thoughts. This is, however, one of the few passages that will undoubtedly send shivers down even the most avid horror lovers’ spines.
After this, Kobayashi delivered both Hori and Marika to a hospital for treatment and recovery. Kobayashi and his cameraperson break into Junki Ishii’s home only to find her dead due to suicide. The house was a grand mess, with loops and dead pigeons all over the place. However, Junko’s young son had survived the ordeal and was alive. Kobayashi felt pity for the child and adopted him. It was further shown that he was not Ishii’s biological son.
Kobayashi went back to the village historian, who had discovered an ancient scroll depicting the Kagutaba summoning process. The sorcerers, according to the scroll, sacrificed newborn monkeys to the demon and sought a way to feed Kagutaba.
Junko Ishii had been possessed by the devil and was feeding him foetuses through Kana’s mediumship. So Kana was feeding on foetuses, which explains why she appeared surrounded by embryos.
Meanwhile, Marika was physically and psychologically healing from her ordeals. Hori, on the other hand, was sent to a mental institution, but he managed to escape and find his way to Kobayashi’s home. He reveals that the boy adopted by Kobayashi was, in fact, Kagutaba. He hits the child with a rock and incapacitates good old Kobayashi.
For a brief period, the boy transforms into Kagutaba, and behind him, Kana’s apparition makes its presence known. As Hori leaves with the boy, Kobayashi’s wife Keiko becomes possessed, and self immolates. Hori is found dead the next day, and a videotape describing these events is discovered.