Sixteen More Screams For Halloween: Day 14 (Cure)

Ahh, once again it's the kind of film that makes me scratch my head and wonder just what I'm going to bullshit about until I get a sufficient amount of words in the Notepad file to deem this postable. Helpfully, though, it's quite serendipitous that I should have to cover this film on the blog directly after Larry Cohen's God Told Me To. In a madcap way, they're sort of mirrors of each other. In another madcap way, they're both opposite. Yes, that's contradictory, but let me explain by way of example, and in doing so get an analysis of this neat little film.

Both of these movies are about trenchcoated detectives investigating a series of sudden and brutal killings which are committed out of nowhere by otherwise upstanding citizens, and both have the killers acting relatively calm and collected after committing unspeakable atrocities. This is about where the similarities end, but for one key thing. God Told Me To has the killers just up and declare the title of the film as their motive, and so that's the starting point of where that film goes. Cure leaves things inscrutable, undefined, and thus leaves both the detectives and the audience wondering where this is going and why. One of the detectives playfully throws out the idea of "the devil made me do it", which stands in stark opposition to "God told me to". Is the malevolent force which makes people kill in Cure the devil? It could be. That's not me being coy, either. It really could be, I suppose. 

On a more definable level, it's a drifting stranger who claims to have amnesia who keeps encountering these people moments before they snap and do a murder for some reason or another, and the movie lets you luxuriate in that wondering for... well, for the rest of it. Still, it defines itself in some ways. This man is an accomplished hypnotist who has managed to crack the old chestnut of making someone do something under hypnosis they'd never normally do, and is inspiring them to murder people. Instantly, then, Cure becomes a strangely ambiguous film where you're not sure if what you're seeing is real or not once the detectives encounter this guy. Against better judgment they keep going to interrogate him alone, one lit lighter flame or dripping water source away from falling under his sway. It's the kind of thing a certain type of critic would yell about, characters making ill-defined and illogical decisions that would not instantly solve the film. You know, if those kind of critics were watching 25 year-old Japanese psychothrillers instead of tentpole sci-fi and capestuff.

Point is, God Told Me To explained its premise straight but was an utterly gonzo premise about religion being aliens. Cure, by contrast, is more grounded (probably) but takes no claim to explain itself past the halfway point and leaves it to you to figure shit out. I'm fine with a movie like that, and if nothing else it left me with some things to think about regarding what I thought happened. Not that there isn't gonzo, as Cure somehow revolves around the spectre of Franz Mesmer himself somehow. Really, it's a duality of approaches. I think I liked Cure a little more than God Told Me To because of that boldness, but hell, you should fire up both and judge for yourself.