Set during a civil war in feudal Japan,[a] the film's plot concerns the vengeful spirits, or onryō, of a woman and her daughter-in-law, who died at the hands of a band of samurai.

They find the samurai troop and bring them to an illusory mansion in the bamboo grove where the burnt-out house was.

After seeing her reflection as a ghost in a pool of water, he attacks her with his sword, cutting off her arm, which takes on the appearance of a cat's limb.

The walls disappear around him, revealing the charred remains of his family home where Shige and Yone were murdered.

"[6] The review concluded that the film "has a sufficiently ingenious story to remain enjoyable throughout, and it sporadically discovers moments of genuinely bizarre invention".

[6] Manohla Dargis, in a review of the film for The New York Times in 2010, described it as "a ghost story that's more eerie than unnerving, and often hauntingly lovely".

[7] The following year, Maitland McDonagh called the film "darkly seductive" and "sleek, hair-raisingly graceful, and ready to take its place alongside the other landmarks of Japanese horror history".

[4] Kuroneko is one of a number of Japanese "monster cat" horror films (kaibyō eiga or bake neko mono), a subgenre derived primarily from the repertoire of kabuki theatre.

[12] Additionally, lead actor Kichiemon Nakamura was a kabuki performer, and Hideo Kanze, who played the Mikado in Kuroneko, specialized in Noh theatre.

[12] Kuroneko was screened at a 2012 retrospective on Shindō and Kōzaburō Yoshimura in London, organised by the British Film Institute and the Japan Foundation.