31 Days of Night, Day 2: Cursed

Tonight's film, Cursed, shares its name with an American horror movie starring Christina Ricci that came out around the same time. Although the Christina Ricci film was a pretty decent werewolf film and this one is a film about the Devil's own convenience store, there is a broad thematic connection between the two films: the idea of contagion.

As we progress through the month, we'll see this theme come up quite a lot in horror films from across Asia, but particularly in Japan, the idea that the supernatural is a contagion that infects who come in contact with it, spreading like an infection. The most iconic examples of this, of course, are Ringu and Ju-on, which we will be watching later this month, but it's a common thread through a great deal of Japanese horror that once you come into contact with the supernatural, the rest of your (usually short) life will be tainted by it.

Guest Reviewers: +A. Middleton , +Mark Parker , +Frank Fernandez and the Masked Wrestler El Periquito

Okay this film was actually quite good - I know I said I don't like to speak in terms of good and bad, but this one was pretty good. The soundtrack was..not so good. That pretty much covers the general review part of the film so for the rest of this post I'm going to talk about how this film combines the concept of infection I mentioned above with a story about that important cornerstone of Japanese culture - the convenience store.

In Japan, you can go to a convenience store to pay your bills, buy pretty much any product you need (including popular video games and action figures), avail yourself of office supplies and buy 100 yen pork buns. For young people (and busy people and, well, lots of people) convenience stores are an important part of the community and, like any pillar of society, become great fodder for horror when what first seemed like a bastion of normalcy, even banality, becomes sinister. 

One of the reviewers commented on how unique the concept of a haunted convenience store is, and I really feel like this movie ran with that concept to its fullest - it wasn't just a haunted convenience store, it was the evilest convenience store imaginable, and those it didn't kill eventually became a part of its great and terrible design.

I don't want to give away many of the plot points, but this film is also an anthology of sorts - albeit one with an overarching frame story surrounding the lives of the store's part-time workers (Samson and Nori) and Nao, a young woman from a corporate firm looking to buy the convenience store from its current owners. As the movie progresses, we are - briefly - introduced to characters who are essentially infected by the supernatural power of the convenience store and haunted by the spirits present within. Those that don't die, eventually, become like the store's owners - twisted by the evil to which they are subjected.

There are a number of scenes involving symbolic impurity present in the film - the convenience store's origins touch on this, and there's a lengthy discussion between two characters on whether a supernatural impurity might be punishment or simply a natural force beyond human control. The movie doesn't have any particularly easy answers to offer there, but it does touch on some themes that we will see more and more in-depth as we explore this sub-genre of horror, making it an excellent primer on the topic.

All in all, I recommend this film to anyone who's interested in Japanese horror films but wants to stretch beyond the "standards" set by films like The Ring and The Grudge. Its unique premise and use of frame story makes it an interesting experience in its own right, while simultaneously grounding it in themes that recur throughout the entire genre.