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Too much of everything

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

In Japan nothing appears to be safe from hexes! And you have a good chance of crossing paths with one. This time around it's a haunted, doom 'n' gloom mini-mart store giving out bad vibes, the deadpan owners seem to be out of their minds and whenever 999 or 666 cha-chings on the cash register your ticket is up. And not just the idea of handing over your cash, but your life too.Quite loopy when it wants to be, as there's a nightmare logic to the storytelling - things just happen, mainly bad things. It might at times use the same-old ghost tropes (eg whispering voices, bumps in the dark and possessions), but the set-pieces are overblown and amusingly staged for few WTF moments - like the faceless stranger in the Eskimo hooded jacket to the hallucinogenic eyeball popping out of somebody's head and blood shot eyes appearing in the darkest spots in the store. Some deaths are more effective than others, yet each one brought something different. My fave being a lady getting stalked by a man with a bandaged head dragging a sledgehammer behind him. The scene can be intense.For its minor budget and digital look the director manages to craft stylistic flashes (albeit using slow-mo and encroaching camerawork) together with ratcheted suspense and weirdness. However what made it much more surreal is that the exposition drop explaining the background of the store comes from nowhere. Everybody goes about their daily routines, in spite of the unnatural occurrences surrounding the store like crows circling above. All we get are bemused looks from those who aren't yet affected, compared to the ones who seemed to be caught in a trance. So when a crazy old lady pushing a pram with a toy doll (who we see only for a brief second early in the film) decides drops by to warn the mystified staff of the store's evil origins - you know what they do next? The smartest thing; intelligibly walk away from their jobs. No conviction to investigate, or making peace with the unrest spirits. It's now somebody else's problem. So in a way the resolution doesn't provide any sort of payoff. This might explain why the plot comes around full circle and I couldn't understand why it would, other then to amplify one final shock. In doing so it just added to the convoluted structure set-up at the beginning. Tight, moody hyperphysical low-rent J-horror with no real method to its madness.

Nao (Hiroko Satô) works as a cashier in a convenience store that occupies a plot of land previously owned by a mass murderer and which is built on foundations made from crushed gravestones. As a result, the place is a centre for negative energy, its aisles are haunted by menacing soul-less creatures (a bit like my local ASDA), and anyone unwise enough to shop there winds up dead soon after. Will Nao also fall foul of the curse on her creepy workplace?Low-budget Asian ghost flick Cursed is a mish-mash of frustratingly familiar themes inspired by a whole slew of other (but not necessarily better, IMHO) J-Horror 'classics'; but although it doesn't demonstrate much in the way of originality in terms of actual content, Yoshihiro Hoshino's unconventional directorial style and random approach to plot development does ensure that his film offers just enough novelty and individuality to prevent it from feeling too stale.Hoshino opens with a rather predictable but still very effective jolt, quickly develops a suitably creepy atmosphere that is sustained throughout, and delivers at least one genuinely tense scene (featuring a sledgehammer wielding killer) amidst the more routine J-horror elements: eyes staring out from unexpected places, a spooky girl crawling from an electrical household appliance, a silent faceless figure in a Parka coat... y'know, all that malarkey.

It's first important that I tell you that Cursed is very low budget. Why? Because the UK release has impressive box art that suggests this is an A-Movie with an A-Movie budget. It's not, it's a B-Movie with an unknown cast and low production values. It's very well made given it's budget, and some of Japan's best horror moments (Kairo, Ringu, Dark Water) are fairly low-budget by US/UK standards anyway, so by no means hold it's budget against it, but it IS very low budget.Warnings aside, Cursed is a very odd, off-kilter horror. Being a Japanese film, Cursed does provide many of the things you'd expect, like lank haired, slow moving girl-ghosts, and bizarre signs and twists that lead your detective work from one side of the street to another continuously. However, it's the new elements that make it interesting. In terms of vibe and style, Cursed draws more from directors like Lynch, Shinya Tsukamoto and Miike Takashi than the key players in the J-Horror genre. If you're expecting a stop gap till they crank out the third Grudge, stop here. This ain't Ringu, it ain't Ju-on. It's a new beast entirely.It goes like this. There's a convenience store where protagonist Nao works, and it's got a curse on it. When your items come up to any variant of 666 or 999, something follows you home from the store and messes up your life in one way or another. Mostly the victims get killed, but one or two have something different happen to them, and they're never followed by the same spirit, so each haunting/killing is different and unique. This is the second thing other than the direction that sets it apart from the rest of the J-Horror crowd. In the Ring films and others of their ilk, the horror is in wondering at what point the ghost will appear, whereas in Cursed, while you know something is gonna turn nasty at any moment, anything could happen, so you're more on edge.Still, despite it being fresh and new in style, there are a few niggling factors that got on my nerves. The hypnotic, trippy visuals make the hauntings and deaths more hallucinatory than scary, so in honesty Cursed is not a hugely frightening movie. It's far less overblown or cliché than something like Shutter or One Missed Call, but in it's experimentalist nature it loses a lot of the ghost-house fun of a straight horror movie. I got annoyed at times with the random bouts of cartoon violence as well, there's a few scenes that aren't as horrific as they could be with a little more restraint, and when there is blood (and to be honest this movie earns it's 18 certificate quite admirably with one scene alone) there's too much and it collapses into Brian Yuzna style comic book violence.Minor issues with an otherwise brave and very creepy entry into the J-Horror library. It isn't a thrill ride, but Cursed is a spooky, psychedelic and above all believably dark tale that's well worth anyone's time.

An entertaining Japanese horror film with some creative ideas which don't so much add to the narrative as simply create an eerie surreal atmosphere around the convenience shop as well as an element of humour at times. The film is also beautifully centralised around a small shop setting.I would recommend someone watch this film and not be phased by the story structure being very reminiscent of any other Asian horror films or the cheap appearance of the visuals. This film also makes good use of its budget and while looking cheap is far from trashy. It lacks the seamlessness of Hollywood in its editing and camera use but this really doesn't limit the enjoyability of the film, it if anything adds to it.