(1988)
Overall: MEH
Released simultaneously with a video game of the same name which later inspired Resident Evil, the film Sweet Home, (Suwīto hōmu, The Mamiya House), not only bares absolutely zero similarities with the zombie survival series, but it also shares none of the hallmarks of its director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's subdued future work. On the one hand, it is a standard, "ghost out for revenge in a cursed, abandoned mansion" story, but the tone is primarily goofy. Horrendously terrible, sappy synth music interrupts random scenes and slap stick or just plain quirky humor is attempted at times. This occasionally jives oddly with moments that are gory and dark, as it never goes fully into something akin to Sam Raimi Looney Tunes mode even though it seems like it wants to. Several set pieces are gleefully absurd though, like a guy turning into a melting skeleton and a woman getting her skull split open by an unnecessarily large ax. The practical effects are also solid, particularly with a giant, animatronic ghost monster during the finale. Things crawl a bit too much at regular intervals though and the movie is ultimately more ridiculous than interesting.
(1992)
Overall: MEH
If one was to imagine Javier Bardem's character from No Country from Old Men as a seven-foot tall ex-sumo wrestler who decides to murder everyone in a high-rise office building for no reason, than this would at least give you an on-paper idea of what Kiyoshi Kurosawa's The Guard from Underground, (Jigoku no Keibiin, The Guard from Hell, The Security Guard from Hell), is. The title maniac here just calmly tells people that they do not understand that there are people like him in the world, which is the only answer he ever gives in smashing them to death. Anyone expecting some profound meaning behind any of this will be gravely disappointed though. While Kurosawa was beginning to experiment with subdued atmosphere at this point, (letting a large number of moments play out to no music and very little if any action), the plotting seems to have been bypassed in the process. Taking place at one location, it is detrimentally monotonous during its first two acts especially. Almost nothing of any interest transpires well into the movie and once Japanese Lurch cuts the power off to start meandering around on his murder spree, even more boring slasher motifs are brought into the proceedings. It is a skippable entry from top to bottom.
(1997)
Overall: GREAT
For the first time in his directorial career, Kiyoshi Kurosawa was able to match his sobering tone with a story that was perfectly suited for it in Cure, (Kyua). Said story is enormously puzzling and the fact that the main character, (played exceptionally well by Kōji Hashimoto who would go on to appear in a number of Kurosawa's films), grows violently frustrated with just how puzzling it is, allows him to act as a perfect stand-in for the audience. Some could argue that the approach here crosses over into style over substance as the material is certainly obtuse enough to discredit as pretentious. Amazingly though, the ethereal atmosphere is so rich that even after the refreshing shock of how void of genre-pandering the film is has run its course, layers can be theorized as to why the material was tackled in such a patient manner. Few movies of any kind manage to portray the fascinatingly curious concept of hypnotism in such a creepy way. "Creepy" in the sense of being impenetrably unknown. The film could be as deep or as void of heaviness as one can surmise yet in either event, it captures a strange, unsettling mood that is wonderfully difficult to shake off.
(2001)
Overall: GOOD
Kiyoshi Kurosawa returned to supernatural terrain with the television film Séance, which is another triumph for the director. Kurosawa was approached by Kansai Telecasting Corporation to adapt Mark McShane's novel Seance on a Wet Afternoon which had also been the basis for a 1964 British film of the same name by Bryan Forbes. Being a Japanese movie, the setting is obviously changed while the story still focuses on a doomed, unassuming couple who are haunted by the unfortunate decisions that they make. Story-wise, it is an examination of how well-meaning people can so easily panic, followed by the guilt that inadvertently consumes them after a calamity occurs by their unwilling hands. The material gels ideally with Kurosawa's fully realized, consistently restrained style and the TV presentation does not hurt the end result in the slightest. Quite the contrary actually as it further allows for the filmmaker to calmly undersell the frightening bits without the use of an overt violence or gimmicky shocks. The characters only occasionally even raise their voices and it stays very haunting as well as almost oddly soothing in its mood. This is hardly a feel-good product mind you, but for a sombre tragedy with ghosts in it, it is rather exceptional.
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