Noiro: The Curse

Several years ago, I took great pride in having a display created in celebration of the movie The Warriors, like my own Terracotta Army, but with The Warriors. And mixed in with them was a real life punk in blue jeans, a red and white striped shirt, Coke-bottle glasses, and a red and white striped beanie. How was I to find him?

— To be continued.

This week’s movie is 2005’s Noiro: The Curse from director Koji Shiraishi. I figured after watching a found footage horror movie last week, I might take a stab at an actual documentary about unnatural occurrences over in Japan compiled from lost footage from a documentary filmmaker named Masafumi Kobayashi. It’s kind of messed up that Shiraishi took directing credit, but I guess someone had to compile the footage after Kobayashi’s house burned down and he went missing.

Masafumi Kobayashi was a journalist who chronicled supernatural phenomena since the mid 90s. According to the documentary, he pursued horrifying and unsolvable mysteries. He made several documentaries about ghost sightings and other unnatural creatures, but it was his documentary about The Curse that finally did him in. Or not. He is still missing after all. Maybe he changed his name and became a spokesperson for Steak & Shake in Japan much in the same way Heather Donahue did after The Blair Witch Project. 

Before Kobayashi disappeared, he assembled a final cut of his documentary which is shown after Shiraishi’s intro. The first thing we see is a woman in a blood red devil mask screaming and writhing on the ground. If you were to think the subject matter involves demonic possession, you’d be right, but there’s all sorts of messed up stuff going on in this documentary. Psychics, ghosts, and men dressed in tin foil also come into play.

A suburban homemaker calls on Kobayashi to investigate the sound of babies crying. She kept hearing the noise over at a neighbor’s house across the way and record the sound. She says the only people living in that house are a middle-aged woman and a young boy. The neighbor’s name is Junko Ishii and Kobayashi and his camera operator get berated and chased off her property. We catch a glimpse of a pale boy looking out the window as they leave. Kobayashi then gets the sound of the babies crying analyzed by an audio expert. The audio expert determines that it’s cats meowing and not babies crying, but that the sound is off because cats meowing turns into a baby inhale.

He goes back to visit the homemaker who told him about her neighbor. She informs him that Ishi moved away with the young boy not long after Kabayashi tried to interview her. The homemaker then tells him that the baby sounds stopped after that. Kobayashi investigates the abandoned property only to find dead birds. The homemaker and her young daughter wave Kabayashi goodbye. The video pauses and it’s revealed that the homemaker and her daughter died five days later in a freak car accident. 

We’re only about ten minutes into this movie and I’m already losing my mind. We’re treated to other pieces of the puzzle like a national psychic competition for young children, a Japanese actress getting tormented by a demon, and an old village’s dark history with forbidden rites. And then when you think The Curse is concluded, Shiraishi reveals that there was one final video found giving some possible insight into the fate of paranormal investigator Masafumi Kobayashi.

I’ll give you a hint.

It’s not a good fate.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, and episode 599) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.