When Curse was released in 2000, it was still a video version. Almost all the booths that buy pirated CDs are selling many DVDs with classic lenses as their covers. Even friends who have never seen a movie will be familiar with the pale boy in Curse. It can be seen that "Curse 1" caused quite a stir at that time, and also prompted overseas remakes and their own sequels. Therefore, it is well-deserved to regard Mantra 1 as a classic.
"Curse 1" begins with a reverse sequence, giving a close-up of the tragic death of the volunteer Li Jia, which basically hints at the origin of the haunted house. Saeki Xiong Gang used to be the owner of this house. He has a beautiful family and a lovely son. Unfortunately, in a hospital examination, he learned that he had oligospermia, and the possibility of giving birth to the next generation was only one in ten thousand. Xiong Gang began to suspect that his wife was having an affair and that his son was not his own. He secretly looked through his wife's diary, and was surprised to find that his wife had been secretly in love with his son's teacher Kobayashi, so he brutally killed his wife Kayako in a rage and sealed his son in the cupboard with tape. In this way, the dying wife cursed everyone who came to the house with the ghost of her son.
This is also the origin of the film title "Curse". The ghosts of unjust death, the curse planted when they die. Surging resentment lingers in the residence or hiding place of the dead. Anyone who violates the chassis of resentment will die, and the new undead will become new resentment, cursing the next person who has something to do with him.
Compared with western horror films, Curse 1 creates a typical oriental ghost science, so it can be called a masterpiece of "Japanese horror". The terror in the west lies in the logical causal cycle, and the cycle of death has cause and effect, which is a rigorous logic. Oriental ghost learning, born in the era without law, is the constraint of people on themselves. It is said that people are doing things, people are watching things, and people are killing for their lives. So the curse itself becomes a kind of revenge. Kayako, who became a ghost, killed her husband together with Xiong Jun, which was only the beginning of her revenge on society, not the end of revenge.
After she killed Xiong Gang, she also killed the Deyong family who lived in the haunted house, and even killed the nanny Li Jia who volunteered in the house. Even the police and the daring female students who came to find out were not spared. At this point, the curse of resentment has spread to irrelevant people, and even spread a new curse like a plague. This is the horror of "curse 1". Coupled with the immersive rhythm in the film and the horrible rendering of the background music, even the audience sitting in front of the screen has a cold back, as if to be swallowed up by this resentment.
Kayako, who slowly crawled out of the stairs in the film, and the handsome guy who appeared quietly and pale at any time have also become the psychological shadow of countless people for many years. Ironically, the poster of the 2003 movie Curse 1 was cancelled because it was too scary. The image of spectre in Curse 1 is almost a classic in Japanese horror movies. Female ghosts always wear bloody clothes and long hair, and their makeup faces are often pale with two dark circles, while child ghosts are generally pale and have empty eyes.
"Curse 1" still follows the atmosphere rendering techniques commonly used in Japanese horror movies. Taking mysterious sounds and objects as the carrier, the protagonist is lured to death, and when an unknown space is slowly opened, a close-up is suddenly given to the spectre, which achieves the effect of scaring.
In addition, the spectre in the film will appear anytime and anywhere, giving people a feeling that no place is absolutely safe. For example, some netizens have said that they dare not watch ghost movies in summer because they have no sense of security in bed. But after watching Curse 1, Takashi Shimizu will tell you that the quilt is also an unsafe place, and Kayako will hide in your quilt to scare you, which is similar to the horror of Sadako crawling out of the video, and it is this pervasive curse that makes people really shudder.
And since we want to evaluate Curse, we have to compare it with The Ring of Midnight. In contrast, The Bell at Midnight tells the story of the hero in a mysterious story with time as a clue. Curse is divided into roles, and each cursed person in the film is told as a separate unit.
This arrangement disrupts the original time sequence, so that some viewers can't understand the order. But in doing so, terror is no longer bound by time, but fills the whole space, making the haunted house itself a hell. The main scene of the film is always set in the haunted house, which drives the horror of the whole film with the strangeness brought by the repression of the environment and the chaos of time.
Today, "Curse 1" has been released for nearly 20 years, but its horrible scenes can still bring people fright. And the follow-up story of the whole series is also very distracting. A horror ghost film that can stand by for such a long time is naturally a classic.