Cure (1997) • Blu-ray + DVD [Eureka! Masters of Cinema]

A frustrated detective deals with the case of several gruesome murders committed by people who have no recollection of what they’ve done.

written by Remy Dean.

Writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa remembers a TV news report about a seemingly normal man who committed a heinous murder. The killer had been living in a nice middle-class neighbourhood and never showed any signs he was capable of such an evil act. Those who knew him were shocked he could have kept it hidden so well.

Kurosawa was struck by the thought that perhaps he’d not ‘kept it hidden’ because he hadn’t always been evil. Had something changed him from the normal, everyday guy he appeared to be, into a cold-blooded killer? Just maybe, he thought, any so-called ‘normal’ person has the potential for evil. It’s not something that resides in the other, the outsider, the psycho, but something that could be triggered within all of us. This chilling premise provided the seed for Cure, his 1997 landmark psychological-thriller, and it’s this concept that makes the film so insidiously scary.