re:mote voices

Title:Cursed [Chô' kowai hanashi A: yami no karasu]
Cast: Kyôko Akiba, Takaaki Iwao, Etsuyo Mitani, Hiroko Satô, Osamu Takahashi, Susumu Terajima
Director: Yoshihiro Hoshino

A large chain are preparing to take over a small convenience store, however the representative of the chain has met with a strange accident. So one of his colleagues has to finish the deal - going along meeting the owners and doing a stock take. But neither the stock or the owners, or the store for that matter, are what she expects. In fact the only thing that does seem to be normal about the place is the girl that works the till.

The obvious first frame of reference for this Japanese horror film would be Ju-on - The Grudge. Both being about locations, Ju-on featuring a haunted house where bad things happen, while Cursed features a haunted convenience store where bad things happen. But comparisons to Ju-on would be simplistic. The store in this film is the kind of place you would perhaps find in the town that featured in Uzumaki, staffed by relatives of the hoteliers from Gozu.

A store where no matter what you buy it always comes to either 666 or 999 yen. Where after shopping there you will be lured down dark alleys by the voice of children, or something threatening will follow you home. Where bird strikes against the shop front leave a pile of dead crows out front. Where the owners spend all their time sitting watching the checkout girl's every move via CCTV. Cursed is kind of bizarre, a little uncomfortably weird - where regular Asian horror builds to an explanation, Cursed just is, with a character turning up long enough to give token gesture explanation for those that need it, before getting back to the madness.

The original Japanese title for this film is actually Chô' kowai hanashi A: yami no karasu, so Cursed isn't a direct translation. I am reliably informed that a direct translation would provide something along the lines of "Totally Scary Story A: The Crow of Darkness." While you can understand why the distributor for this DVD didn't go with the unwieldy version, Cursed seems a bland substitute, and the original title does kind of sum up the film better. The Crow Of Darkness - more fun than the more formulaic Asian horror films of late.