Cure (キュア, Kyua) is a 1997 Japanese neo-noir psychological horror film written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, starring Kōji Yakusho, Masato Hagiwara, Tsuyoshi Ujiki, Anna Nakagawa, Yoriko Dōguchi and Yukijirō Hotaru.

It received widespread positive reviews from critics,[4] and is considered a progenitor of the explosion of Japanese horror media in the late 1990s and early 2000s, preceding other releases like Hideo Nakata's Ring and Takashi Shimizu's Ju-On.

[5] Kenichi Takabe, a Tokyo Metropolitan Police detective, is involved in the investigation of a bizarre series of violent killings by seemingly random perpetrators.

Takabe, together with his friend and colleague, forensic psychologist Shin Sakuma, eventually identifies a common thread connecting the murders.

Takabe suspects that Mamiya has no memory problems at all and is in fact a master of hypnosis capable of planting homicidal suggestions in strangers' minds by exposing them to repetitive sounds, such as the motion of water or the flame of a lighter.

Subsequently, Sakuma unconsciously draws an X in black paint on his wall and starts to experience hallucinations of Takabe menacingly cornering him.

Exploring the building, Takabe finds and plays an old phonograph cylinder containing a recording of a male voice, thought to be that of Bakuro, repeating what seem to be hypnotic instructions.

[13] Meanwhile, A. O. Scott of The New York Times noted that Kiyoshi Kurosawa "turns the thriller into a vehicle for gloomy social criticism.

Club said: "Kurosawa, a prolific genre stylist who specializes in low-key thrillers and horror films, undercuts the lurid material by keeping a chilly, almost clinical distance from the events and unfolding the story in elliptical pieces.

"[15] For Screen Slate, Stephanie Monohan wrote: "Arguably overshadowed by other films in the turn-of-the-century J-Horror canon like Ringu (1998) and Audition (1999), Cure lives on as one of the more powerful works of the era.