Why Noroi: The Curse Is Being Called The Scariest Found Footage Movie Ever – Screen Rant

Noroi: The Curse is over a decade old, but its appearance on Shudder has helped new audiences find and appreciate this exceptional found footage film.

The height of the found footage subgenre of horror has passed, but movies like Noroi: The Curse are proof that theres still not only a ton that can be done with the structure, but that the best found footage content is maybe yet to come.

When people think of found footage horror, films like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity that most commonly come to mind. These iconic movies undoubtedly helped the stylistic type of horror gain popularity as well as usher in hordes of inferior copycats. As a result, it can be easy to write off a new found footage horror movie, but there are still creative filmmakers who have worthwhile stories to tell this way. Kji Shiraishis Noroi: The Curse frames itself as a realistic documentary about some disturbing paranormal activity, but the films story slowly gets out of control.

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Its not uncommon for some horror films to get overlooked upon their initial releases and only true gain a proper appreciation years later, with this being even more prevalent with foreign horror films. Noroi is a prime example of this, with the film being released back in 2005 to critical acclaim, but the found footage horror film has only recently caught on with major audiences due to it being readily available on Shudders horror streaming service. What horror fans are learning is that Noroi: The Curse isnt just a satisfying found footage horror film, but it very well might be the best ever.

What makes Noroi: The Curse such a powerful take on the found footage genre is that it presents itself as a mundane paranormal investigation documentary. Masafumi Kobayashi (Jin Muraki) embarks on a supernatural documentary, but right from the jump its made clear that Kobayashi has disappeared and that tragedy has fallen onto his family. Immediately theres a growing sense of dread since the audience knows that a bleak ending is inevitable for Kobayashi. Granted, this documentary angle is also present in other impressive found footage movies like The Taking of Deborah Logan, The Last Exorcism, or Creep. Those films all begin as documentaries, but their cues eventually become more representative of standard found footage material.

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Why Noroi: The Curse Is Being Called The Scariest Found Footage Movie Ever - Screen Rant

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero