The Cure

“Kurosawa (…) turns the thriller into a vehicle for gloomy social criticism (…) creates a mood of dislocated terror by keeping the audience as confused as the police (…) constructs an elaborate psychological maze and then strands us in the middle of it.” 

"Unsettling and deeply enigmatic (…) “Cure” delves ever further into abstraction as it goes along, casting its own hypnotic spell and inviting as many interpretations as a Rorschach inkblot." 

"Tone and atmosphere mirror subject to perfection in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s hypnotic trip into the lower depths of the human mind" 

"While its creepy mystery plot is easy enough to follow (...) it’s unsatisfying as a story precisely because it aspires to create a mounting sense of dread by enlarging questions rather than answering them" 

"It's well enough acted and directed to advance Kurosawa's claim to be taken as an important new voice in Japanese cinema." 

"With its gift for infusing uneasiness into every frame, Kurosawa’s moody, unnerving film continues to spook us even after the lights have gone on." 

"The action is tactful, the style controlled. Kurosawa has a good eye (...) 'Cure' sticks with you—it’s a movie about the power of suggestion that casts a troubling spell on the viewer as well."