Noroi: The Curse is a horror film that does not really tell you what kind of experience you are in for straight away – it starts very very quietly, almost like you are watching a documentary about something strange that probably has a normal explanation.
Found footage horror has also been done so many times that it is easy to know the formula before the film even begins – someone finds some disturbing footage, people investigate something they should probably leave alone, and eventually everything goes horribly wrong – but Noroi: The Curse takes a much slower approach..
The story follows Masafumi Kobayashi, a paranormal investigator who is working on a documentary about a series of strange incidents – there are reports of strange sounds coming from a house, a woman experiencing disturbing behaviour, unusual deaths, and other small details that seem like separate stories.
Kobayashi then starts noticing patterns, and the more he investigates, the more these strange events begin to connect, before everything starts becoming something much bigger and much more disturbing.
That is where Noroi: The Curse really starts to get under your skin.
A Horror Movie That Takes Its Time
The biggest thing you need to know about Noroi: The Curse is that it is patient, very patient,and this is not a horror film built around constant jump scares or big moments every ten minutes, as a lot of the movie is made up of interviews, recordings, conversations, and Kobayashi following one strange lead after another.
For some people, that might sound boring, and I can understand why some viewers might struggle with the beginning, as it takes its time before showing you where everything is going, but that slow build is exactly why the film works so well.
The movie makes you feel like you are investigating the mystery yourself, where you are collecting the same pieces of information as Kobayashi, trying to figure out what connects everything together – every answer creates another question, and every discovery makes things feel even more uncomfortable.
The Found Footage Style Works Well
One of the biggest problems with found footage horror is that sometimes the camera makes no sense, where you start thinking – why is this person still filming and why would they keep recording when everything is clearly going wrong?
Noroi: The Curse does avoid that better than most however because the documentary style is actually part of the story – Kobayashi is already investigating these events, so the footage feels believable – the interviews, recordings, and different sources of information all come together like pieces of a real investigation.
It actually does not feel like you are watching a horror movie trying to scare you, it feels like you have found something that was never supposed to be seen, and I think there is something much creepier about watching old footage and slowly realising that the people in it were involved in something far more serious than they understood.
The Horror Comes From What You Don’t See
The thing Noroi: The Curse does better than many found footage films is creating fear without constantly showing you the threat, because a lot of horror relies on showing the monster, explaining what it can do, and making sure the audience understands the danger.
This film is much more interested in mystery though, where it leaves things unclear, and lets your imagination do a lot of the work – strange person in an interview, a disturbing conversation, or something happening in the background can become creepy because you are not completely sure what you are looking at.
The film understands that uncertainty can be much scarier than seeing everything clearly.
A Mystery That Keeps Getting Darker
The structure of Noroi: The Curse almost feels like watching someone put together a puzzle where the final picture is something you do not want to see, as you watch Kobayashi follow different leads, talk to different people, and slowly uncovers a connection between events that seemed completely unrelated, and the film does ask you to pay attention.
There are a lot of names, details, and small moments that become important later, so it can feel confusing at times, but you are confused because the people investigating this are confused too, and you are trying to understand what is happening while they are trying to understand it.
Final Thoughts
Noroi: The Curse is not a horror film that tries to scare you straight away – it slowly makes you feel like something is very wrong – and while the pacing will not work for everyone, but if you enjoy slow-burn horror, creepy mysteries, and films that stay in your head afterwards, this is absolutely worth watching.
Trailer
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