Doppelganger (2003)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis version). Collaborating with his favourite leading man, Koji Yakusho, writer-director Kurosawa opens Doppelganger (2003) in the existential dread familiar from something like Cure. A scientist, who is working on robotic wheelchair that would help disabled people through concentration and muscular impulses, sees himself in public, a person who […]

License To Live (1998)

There’s a shot in License To Live (1998), directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, where the main character’s father sits in a chair at the foot of his bed. Cast in shadows, the father is telling his son that he’s leaving after their brief reunion, and he resembles a ghost drained of colour. Kurosawa is best known […]

Séance (2000)

Kiyoshi Kurosawa knows how to make a ghost an eerie presence within a frame. Simple and effective in design. A blur where a face should be. An identifying colour in their clothing. Something that registers the eye eventually as they emerge from a shadow or appear in the visual dimension. They don’t seem aggressive in […]

Cure (1997)

Most horror films shout at you. Cure (1997), directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, never raises its voice. It maintains a steady whisper and is all the more unnerving for it. A Japanese horror film that was part of the ‘J-horror’ wave of the late 1990s, Cure almost stands outside of it by its ordinary, beige-brown palette […]