Koji Shirashi
Noroi

"What the hell is Kagutaba?" A desperate man's scream invades a room covered in aluminum. A bolt from the blue, piercing the daily tranquility. And then: a girl with supernatural powers, a temple, a strange ritual, pigeons, a psychic actress, a journalist investigating paranormal phenomena, mass suicides...

They might seem like very disconnected themes, but they find an almost disconcerting homogeneity in this terrifying horror film, which is presented as if it were true documentation and heartbreaking about a curse rooted in the traditions of a small Japanese village submerged in water in the '70s.

Shooting it is Kobayashi, a robust and fearless journalist, happily married to the smiling Keiko in a cozy house in the center of Tokyo, who decides to investigate strange phenomena continually happening.

It all begins with a child's cry, mysteriously heard every day by a housewife since a strange neighbor moved in next door. And so, Kobayashi calls a couple of friends as cameramen and begins filming, which will lead him to discover that all the strange events are interconnected, plunging into a terrible nightmare that will disturb even his quiet family life.

To mislead the viewer, snippets of (fictitious?) television broadcasts and interviews have been inserted abundantly.

"It's surely not real...but what if it is?" wonders the lost viewer facing images that fall into the surge of a threatening fury, exploding in the terrifying finale (one of the most frightening scenes that horror cinema has ever provided), where chills begin to genuinely manifest. Punches to the stomach are delivered mercilessly. And the anxiety grows, grows ever more, delving into a dark forest reminiscent of "Blair Witch Project".

 Because what is the predecessor of fake amateur films, if not Blair Witch? (although, it should be remembered, the first film made with a handheld camera by a couple of students was the little-known Japanese thriller "Focus", from 1996, which the two Blair Witch directors admitted they drew inspiration from).

 In an era where the trend of amateur horror films is returning (consider "Rec"), Japan has also decided to join in, incredibly managing to surpass all its predecessors (including "Focus", which after all was just an innocuous thriller about a guy leaving a gun in the subway): because, let's admit it, there are few horror films that are truly scary, and this "Noroi" is one of them. And without shedding a drop of blood.

Fear slithers throughout the film, even simply through the moans and screams of a superb and very young (as well as beautiful) Marika Matsumoto (already appeared in the rather bland "Reincarnation" by Takashi Shimizu), through the morbid madness of the medium Hiro, desperate over the disappearance of Kana, the girl with extraordinary powers.

 Several jolts from the chair, several moments when the viewer's soul is inexorably torn apart. Everything that appears is visibly paranormal, yet the direction is so clever and delightful that it makes everything seem like a true story.
And this is one of the film's strengths: its documentation is so concise and precise that it almost makes it seem like a faithful record of reality (in fact, moreover, it is based on a rite actually performed in the '70s, which dealt with the exorcism of the demon Kagutaba).

As they say: true terror lies in everyday life.

Wise words.