Audience Member
Best Samurai horror! Cat monster is really creepy, even if it's a little hard to take seriously at first. Love the sets and costumes too. They don't make movies like this anymore!
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
05/11/24
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Christopher B
Filled with atmospheric and beautifully captured B&W widescreen images, Kuroneko is a haunting beauty of a film on Blu-ray. The transfer itself is magnificent, as Criterion worked with the original camera negatives and only added trace amounts of clean up making it look natural and film like. The film itself tells a supernatural story but one also that ultimately tells more of the evil of mankind then of anything other worldly. A beautiful and creepy score accompanies the film and adds to the creepy imagery making for a great night time watch. Enjoyed watching this one with my brother Jon and friend Brad on a breezy and cool night at Brad's home. Highly Recommend this film for not just Horror fans but people looking for a movie with top notch cinematography and direction to go with an eerie story and mood!
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
11/01/22
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william d
The direction and cinematography are excellent, the story not so much.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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Audience Member
An absolute masterpiece. A must-see due to the technical proficiency of lighting and cinematography alone. Aside from that, the movie is also a great companion film to the classic Onibaba.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/16/23
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Tony S
A very beautiful and tragic folktale, with very blunt anti samurai themes and little depth. The film basically requires for you to suspend your disbelief and treat plot as a magic realism. Why Gintoki can't recognize his wife and mother faces and then his mother posing as a priest with the same voice? Doesn't matter. Ghost magic. Why Raiko is asking for a proof of a dead ghost? Doesn't matter. He still gets one anyway. Why some of the bodies end up at the burned house of mother and wife, yet no one can connect the dots. Not to mention Gintoki himself. Doesn't matter. For the sake of intrigue of what ghost are going to do, everything is irrelevant. Except the half assed jabs at samurai. Proclaiming their superiority, viciousness and laughing to your face. There are modest good moments in that theme. For example: Gintoki disregards his safety and opens the door for the priest the moment he hears, that Emperor might be upset. Showing that by the end he starting to slowly morph into samurai. And by that, sealing his fate. It is a quality, atmospheric film, but it's not Onibaba because weights heavily into supernatural, asking you to swallow ghost magic or assume everyone is an idiot. Since at least 1/3 of the film takes place in a literal illusion.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
12/29/21
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andres s
The drums pound hard! And the shots of the forest and the bamboo trees are great. The thought of a brigade of random samurai invading your home, eating your food, and doing whatever they want is terrifying, especially if it's just two woman living in the house. Oh wow, that's haunting. They straight up just raped the two women in their own house. And the look on the other samurai's faces as they're having their way with the two women, it's like it doesn't phase them - they've done this before. Holy shit! That was one of the most shocking openings I've eve seen for a movie. This group of samurai deserve to be hung. It's so surreal how they just lurked out of the jungle and then disappeared back into it once they were done committing their evil acts. It almost feels like that group of samurai weren't human, as if they were like a group of demons or something just preying on the weak, taking whatever they want. And on top of that they fucking burned their house down! What?! Wow, what an incredibly horrific setup to a horror movie, brilliant. There's no dialogue, just haunting imagery and striking visuals.
Holy shit, that shot of the woman in white gliding across the top of the pagoda was incredibly creepy. So eerie. I love it. Ok, that special effect was impressive. How did they give the illusion that the house of the know ghost mother and daughter's house was moving through the bamboo trees? It looks like they spliced maybe two different scenes together. Very impressive illusion. It's so crazy, this good-intentioned samurai basically helped a ghost get back home lol. The way the mother and daughter walk is very ghost-like. Almost as if they're gliding or floating across the floor, being very careful with each step they take. Dude that quick shot of the daughter's hand while she pours sake! It was all hairy like a werewolf and sharp nails like some hairy demon wolf lady!
The whole mentality of, samurai "men" are going to rule the country and can take whatever they want, is the reason why these men are going to meet their demise at the hands of these two vengeful ghost ladies. Dude she fucking bit his throat out!! And that scene of her shadow throwing her hair around was played backwards! Incredibly creepy. So good. So fucking good, omg. I mean they're basically getting rid of scumbags so they're actually doing the world a favor really. I love the use of fog in this movie, so eerie.
I really appreciate how they take a break from the mother and daughter and focus on Gintoki, the dirty muddied-up samurai who slayed the giant bearded man, and the chief of police. Oh, and now the mother's son has returned home and Gintoki has been given the task to find and kill the monster who has been murdering the samurai's! Things are going to get really interesting. Oh shit Gintoki is the son! Lol. Wow, now the mother and daughter are tasked with the unbearable truth that their beloved son/husband is a samurai. The anticipation of what's going to happen is insurmountable. I guess love really can triumph over evil, since they didn't kill him and all. I mean regardless if they took an oath to kill samurai and drink their blood, they couldn't possibly get themselves to kill their beloved… right? It's such an interesting concept how Gintoki keeps going back forth between the ghost realm and the real world. I love the shot of the mothers reflection in the puddle. Gin was able to catch a glimpse into what she really looks like, her true evil demonic form.
Eerily atmospheric, chillingly creepy and hauntingly beautiful. Kuroneko is a brilliant work of art. Just like in Onibaba, Shindo continues his brilliant use of shadows and lighting in this one. Shindo is a master at creating these hellish worlds in which his movies reside in. In this one, you can hear the samurai mention how crows peck at the corpses of those who've starved and how even the cats are starving. It's a very dark and almost surreal ghost-like world in which Shindo likes to create his movies in. His composition and use of gliding camera work is admirable, influential and inspiring. Shindo's use of experimentation is sublime. From the musical arrangements, to the cinematography to the use of splicing and simple techniques such as playing a scene backwards. The pacing kind of drags a bit at times and it has its cheesy imperfect moments (like how you can see the harness wiring and the repeat shots to convey fast movement), but everything else the movie offers makes up for it. More so than anything, Kuroneko serves as great commentary on the horrors that war can bring and the lingering after effects in a war-torn country. Family vs. work (honor). Love vs. evil. Women vs. the evil that men can do. All in all, it's a terrific ghost story that deserves a rewatch, or even several.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
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