Noroi: The Curse

A documentary film director investigates several seemingly unrelated paranormal events and disappears without a trace. Before doing so, however, he completes Noroi, in which he has combined footage he shot himself with clips from television programmes and even a 16mm film to create an atmospherically powerful, eerie and disturbing narrative. Kôji Shiraishi's mockumentary masterpiece, which is far too little known in the West, is a dramaturgically ambitious and outstandingly staged horror story, woven from several plot threads that only come together in the final act to form a big whole. A centrepiece of found-footage horror cinema. (mk)