10 Things You Didn’t Know About Noroi: The Curse | ScreenRant – Screen Rant

The whole craze around the found-footage style of filmmaking in the horror genre began with The Blair Witch Project. Since then, found-footage has been used and overused for various horror films like the Paranormal Activity series and Cloverfield. But one early, underrated horror gem in this style is Noroi: The Curse, a Japanese horror-"documentary" released in 2005.

RELATED: Top 10 Found-Footage Movies That Are Not Horror

The movie deals with a paranormal expert and journalist named Kobayashi, who investigates creepy encounters with a series of mysterious deaths apparently perpetrated by a spirit called Kagutaba. The premise sounds like a generic supernatural horror film, but there's more to it than that. Despite not being released in the U.S., the film has garnered a cult following over the years.

Here are 10 things you didn't know about Noroi: The Curse.

Noroi sets itself apart from other J-Horror films because of its long duration and large cast. Part of the ensemble comprises several celebrity cameos, some involving actors playing themselves. Marika Matsumoto (actress and the voice behind Rikku in the Final Fantasy video games) has a major role as herself; she starts sleepwalking and making nooses out of wires while shooting for a film at a shrine haunted by the Kagutaba.

RELATED: 10 Scariest Japanese Movies To Never Watch Alone, Ranked

In smaller roles, the film also features prominent Japanese adult-film actresses Ai Iijima (who appears as a TV program guest), and Maria Takagi (as herself).

Director Koji Shiraishi garnered some buzz in 2003 when he directed Honto ni atta, a horror anthology starring well-known Japanese actors and pop stars. Noroi: The Curse became a reality two years later, only with the help of Takashige Ichise. Ichise himself was a well-known figure in Japanese horror as he had also produced Ju-On: The Grudge, and Ring.

RELATED: 5 Reasons Why Ju-On Is A Modern Horror Classic (& 5 Why The Remake Is Better)

Both movies have been lauded as some of the most iconic works in the pantheon of international horror films. The fact that they have received American remakes, sequels, and reboots, bears testimony to this.

Initially, Noroi did not receive a widespread international following because of a limited domestic release. Takashige Ichise's production company, Oz, suffered from bankruptcy, making it hard to promote or distribute the film to other countries. Kadokawa Pictures USA attempted for an American re-release in 2009 but this company too went bankrupt. Hence, Noroi's licensing rights are still in a deadlock.

Koji Shiraishi created a whole lot of "pseudo-history" in his film to give it an authentic feel. The antagonistic spirit used to be summoned by a group of villagers centuries ago, and there is a set of believable handscrolls to show these rituals. Some vintage 16-mm footage of such rituals and ceremonies are also present.

Then, for the majority of the film's runtime, there are also many mock interviews featuring actual actors as mentioned before.

If you observed the film carefully, you will find out that pigeons play a recurring role all through the story. In one of the initial supernatural cases in Noroi, we see dead pigeons surrounding a lady's house. Even when actress Marika Matsumoto gets possessed by demons, pigeons start flying towards her house's windows and dieon the spot.

Some critics have compared the jump scares with the pigeons to Alfred Hitchcock's classic,The Birds.

A usual trope in found-footage horror that's added to make the footage look realistic is making the camera all shaky and blurry in scenes of panic, horror, and action. But funnily, protagonist Kobayashi's camera seems to be in a perfect handheld mode always.

RELATED:10 Found-Footage Horror Movies You've Probably Never Seen (But Should)

There are scenes when people are in danger right in front of Kobayashi's eyes. In ordinary real-life situations, one would usually rush to protect the person in danger, or just run away from the scene, caring about one's own dear life rather than shooting documentary footage. Kobayashi seems like a perfect parallel to Jake Gyllenhaal's character in Nightcrawler.

Asian and African (and sometimes European) characters in mythical or supernatural films are often labeled as "exotic" or "mystical," and offered roles of sorcerers, gypsies, black magic practitioners and the like. To add to the stereotypes, it is shown that people from these cultures are the reason behind spells and curses haunting everyone. From something like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to Drag Me To Hell, this direct/indirect racism has been prevalent.

Noroi takes an interesting dig at this as the sorcerers summoning the demon Kagutaba are shown to be from the West rather than any so-called exotic country.

As mentioned earlier, the film's limited releasemeantless-than-instant promotion for the rest of the world. Writer Julian Singletonrevealed in an essay on how he tried to add to the film's reputation.

'In earlier years, I created the films IMDb and Facebook page in a nave attempt to rescue it from obscurity, where it has accumulated a small yet enthusiastic following," he said.

Some die-hard fans have been uploading Noroi: The Curse on YouTube time and again. And as usual, the movie gets blocked or taken down. In the 2010s, Noroi's subtitled copies was sold through third-party DVD websites. As of now, Noroi is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Even though Noroi: The Curse is certainly Koji Shiraishi's magnum opus, the filmmaker went on to direct other horror classics too. The most significant of these was Occult, which again was shot like a horror mockumentary.

He has been experimenting and reinterpreting the style time and again. In 2011, he even directed a 'found footage erotica' called Cho Akunin.

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'Hello, my name is Shaurya. Would you like some pop culture?'Based in Delhi, India, Shaurya Thapa is into freelance journalism, hip-hop, and engaging in critical analyses over films and TV of varied genres.

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