‘Noroi: The Curse’ Movie Review: Found Footage Done Right!
Following 1999’s ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ low-budget found footage films were all the rage, taking over the horror genre for the better part of a decade, for better or worse. At around the same time, Japanese horror – also known as J-horror – was making waves in the world of horror cinema, thanks in large part to features like 1998’s ‘Ring’ and 2002’s ‘Ju-On: The Grudge.’ Koji Shiraishi tapped into both of these trends for his 2005 found footage film ‘Noroi: The Curse.’
Unlike countless other films that tried to mimic the success and prestige of ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ ‘Ring,’ and ‘Ju-On: The Grudge’ during the early to mid-2000s, ‘Noroi’ is a well-crafted feature that has managed to impress both critics and horror audiences alike. In fact, it remains one of the most highly-rated found footage horror films out there, as well as one of the most acclaimed entries in the J-horror subgenre.
Jin Muraki plays a paranormal investigator named Masafumi Kobayashi, who has become known around the country for his books and documentaries on the supernatural. ‘Noroi’ is essentially presented as Kobayashi’s final documentary film, in which he delves into some local disappearances and mysterious deaths surrounding a chilling ritual to banish an ancient demon. It kicks off with footage of Kobayashi’s own home engulfed in flames.
‘Noroi’ is not your standard found footage film. It doesn’t follow the typical path and instead treads in its own lane, using bits and pieces of different events – everything from interviews to footage from local TV programs – to piece together what has happened to a group of seemingly unrelated people. This includes a young girl named Kana, who exhibited strong psychic abilities during a recent variety TV program, and is now missing.
The story doesn’t necessarily focus on Kana, however, but rather shifts from one narrative to another until they slowly come together like puzzle pieces. Shiraishi, who also co-wrote the script, doesn’t rely on ominous beings like you’d see in other J-horror films, choosing to build up fear and intrigue in his audience using mostly subtle methods before he reveals the whole truth.
Sure, there are some creepy and disturbing scenes here and there but ‘Noroi’ is more about the storytelling, which really fits well into J-horror, because Japan has a long tradition of using storytelling as a form of entertainment. In fact, the traditional medium of rakugo, in which a lone performer sits on stage and tells a story using small props to aid them, has been around since the 9th century.
You might say, ‘well doesn’t every movie tell a story?’ Sure, but ironically they don’t all use storytelling as a method to convey their plot, especially for found footage horror. There are plenty of films in this subgenre that have a minimalist plot that is driven by tropes, jump scares, and camara tricks, barely diving into anything of any real substance. And that’s okay, I’m just saying that ‘Noroi’ doesn’t fall into that same category of filmmaking.
Of course, like most found footage films, there are scenes in which you’re questioning the reasoning behind why anyone would be filming any particular scene in the first place, or would continue to film given certain circumstances. It’s best to suspend your disbelief with any film, but more so when you’re watching one that deals with the paranormal.
There were some other minor problems, in my opinion, here as well, such as one particular character that I found mostly off putting or the lengthy runtime of the film, coming in at nearly 2 hours. As a whole, however, ‘Noroi’ worked for me and is just the kind of found footage or J-horror film that I look for. If you’re into these types of films as well and you don’t mind subtitles or shaky cam, I think you’ll enjoy ‘Noroi,’ too. It’s available to stream right now on Shudder.
For the record, I’d give ‘Noroi: The Curse’ 3.5 stars out of 5.
