Cure

I was mostly bored by this film. The antagonist is supposed to be a fearsome void, but I was mostly annoyed with his questions, like the detective.

After about halfway through and I realized where things were going, my mind started to wander to other, better, examples of psychological control. Hannibal (the TV series) immediately comes to mind; he's able to believably and chillingly control others because he has sunken deep into their wounds and uses an individual's pressure points against them. Or Pusher in The X-Files who has to physically strain to control the minds of others. Or, hell, even The Purple Man from Jessica Jones was more convincing. The guy from Cure just couldn't convince me of his danger; maybe because he just kept asking the same question.

I understand that the banality of the murders and the helpless repetition are the point - what's supposed to scare me - but things felt disconnected and no tension built within me. In a horror movie, I want the threat to feel earned, mechanistically believable even within its own rules.

To try to stand up for the film:

I think it’s trying to say that people ignore the banality of their identities and their failures, and he reminded them of that and so could remove their inhibitions and unlock cruelty within them.

I think it’s saying that when you don’t think critically about yourself and you don’t know your own motivations and accept them for good or bad you are at the edge of being under someone else’s control.

But I'm left with a nagging feeling: is the boredom I felt actually the film failing, or is it the film succeeding at something I don't value?