Cure - 1997

To find a way to get out of the crippling boredom that ended up drying out the urge to continue the office hours setup I was trying to train myself into for weeks, the decision to find a distraction by skimming through an already stacked up unwatched movies in the storage finally came out as a rescue, and surprising ended up landing on the movie Cure. (somewhat in literal sense)

I just couldn’t be able to remember when exactly my past self had the desire to watch this completely unknown movie, but the very first scene of this film cleared up the bugging question why. It didn’t take long to figure out, this cold night would be passed with a Japanese psychological thriller mystery.

Initially, the movie started with the multiple murder mysteries, different victims, different killers, but all were linked together by a big cross [X], from neck to chest, ripping through the skin. Neither victims, nor the killers had any links with other similar cases, so the question arises, how each of those crops got a similar cross on the neck.

Well, the answer of how could be easily detected, even before the plotline revealed that mystery, what bothered me most was the why which remained in riddles till the end. It falls upon our protagonist, the cool, calm, collected, somewhat introverted detective to solve such bizarre cases. If I am being honest, I had the most fun witnessing that character development of such a complex man who believes showing emotions to others only makes you weak.

The movie followed that slow pace of story-telling method that most of the Japanese psychological films do. It creates an atmosphere where you will feel like witnessing bits and pieces of the casual passing life of each character, even the killings become a part of normality, which is a weirdly hard thing to achieve.

All the things that used to be inside me, now they are all outside. That's why I can see all the things that are inside you, Doctor. But the inside of me is empty.

If I had to pick any favorite dialog from the movie, I would probably choose this one. The reason, well it has to be because this was the only time one of those bizarre characters showed any form of honesty.

If you are a fan of the psychological thrilling genre, this movie could easily ignite interest, who knows maybe like me, you will also end up finding some new interesting books to add on the reading list.