The Breakdown: This mockumentary juxtaposes psychic phenomena and paranormal occurrences to investigate a strange curse.
Watch If: You're trying to get some sleep.
Not If: You want to be entertained.
Similar To: Carved (2007)
SECONDARY FACTS
Overall Rating: 1.6/5
Length: 1:55 of build up to a payoff that will never come.
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Scare Factor: 0/5
Gore Factor: 1/5
REVIEW
THE QUICK AND DIRTY
Noroi: The Curse is a mismatched amalgam of loosely connected clips that adds up to a boring film that is actively difficult to pay attention to. The story is weak, and the editing is far too similar to early episodes of To Catch A Predator.
PREMISE: 3
The general idea here is an investigation into seemingly unrelated instances that all tie together with a single specific demon, which might be interesting if the film made any effort to make the story it's trying to tell make sense. I don't mean that the haunting was random, or obscured, because I could handle that, but this film is so shoddily patch-worked together that you keep waiting for the halting, jointed clips that have been safety pinned together to connect, but they never do.
ACTING: 2
The documentary style that Noroi: The Curse uses makes moments for really compelling acting few and far between, and most of them fall flat. No one really... reacts to anything. The closest they get is a scene where one of the characters starts crying what appears to be real tears, and my viewing buddy remarked that it looked like she was stabbing herself with a safety-pin off screen to get herself to cry.
VISUALS: 2
Do you remember this guy?
Because I do, and that's exactly what the graphics in this film remind me of, particularly when the camera glitches. Well that, interspersed with some of those terrifying green graphic renderings from The Most EXTREME. I will say, given that this film was made in 2005, that does make sense, but it also makes the parts of this movie that might have been creepy more of a joke. It doesn't help that in-between scenes there's this freeze effect that lasts just long enough to wonder if it stopped running, or if my computer is trying to go to sleep. Neither were true, they just chose to add these awkward, pace-breaking freeze-frames that remind me of Snapped.
ATMOSPHERE: 1
"I just kept waiting for it all to make sense, for it all to come together, but it never did. It just tricked me into wasting an hour and fiifty-five minutes of my life. I'll never get that time back."
-Me, to my coffee mug, after watching this movie.
The worst part is that the way the scenes are cobbled together, you never really know how far into the story you are, or how many jarring tone-cuts and pigeon-grabbers you'll have to watch jerk across your screen until it all comes together. It's boring. It's a series of puzzle pieces that don't fit together, but they came in the same box so you're sure eventually they'll make a picture, but nope.
DELIVERY: 1
It's just good enough to make you think it knows what it's doing, but it doesn't. and that is the real crime here.
Starring
Written By: Kôji Shiraishi, Naoyuki Yokota
Director: Kôji Shiraishi
Executive Producer: Takashige Ichise
Cinematography: Shôzô Morishita
Special Effects: Nobuyuki Takahashi