7. Noroi: The Curse (2005)
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Kôji Shiraishi never made a movie again that was as good or as scary as Noroi: The Curse. That probably doesnt matter so much, because this onemade cheaply as if it were a TV special like Unsolved Mysteriesis a doozy, a constant and consistent creep fest that keeps upping the ante until its final images are simultaneously foreboding and absurd. One would assume that the combo of J-horror and found footage would be the worst melding of insufferable trends, but Shiraishi understands his medium and how best to use it to imply a realistic intrusion of the spirit world on everyday life. Ominous sound effects layered underneath the documentary within the film, fleeting glimpses of loathsome faces, and one of the most evil looking ceremonial masks this side of Onibaba make Noroi a delightfully shudder-filled affair. The demons in question, the kagatuba, reminds of those cuddly little forest spirits from Miyazakis Princess Mononoke, but the way Shiraishi uses the specters in the context of the story makes them anything but comforting. If theres anything particularly original about Noroi vs. Paranormal Activity or Blair Witch, its the films gleeful willingness to manipulate the footage to reflect another world seething under the surface. The other films remained relatively low-fi because their budgets could not afford other-world beasts. Noroi cant really make them stick as reality either, but it doesnt need to; the hallucinogenic image of literal heaps of ghostly figures crawling over the living work better as harrowing dark fantasy than they do as manifestations of mundane reality.