In 1997 a movie came out which for me changed the face of horror movies forever. The Cure was a new sort of slow burn which really established psychological horror movies in Japanese cinema and solidified the name of the director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. After further success in the horror movies with movies like Pulse he left the horror genre. The aptly titled Creepy is his return to the horror genre after a 10 year hiatus

Creepy opens with a prologue involving a homicide detective played by Hidetoshi Nishijima being critically injured by an escaped psychopath he was investigating. Forward to the present day and he has left his police job behind and has moved into a quiet suburb with his wife and is teaching criminology at the local university

His idyllic life starts to unravel when an old colleague draws him into a case and he also meets his creepy new neighbour played brilliantly by Teruyuki Kagawa. He really carries the movie on in both comedic as well as very frightening and creepy ways

As the various storylines start to converge you really start to think about your own neighbours and how little you really know about them in the same way as the Korean home invasion thriller Hide & Seek that I’ve also reviewed will have you making sure you lock all your doors and windows at night

Although some parts of this thriller seem unimaginable in parts this movie will have to thinking about your neighbours much in the same way as a film like Roman Polanski’s The Tenant. Creepy is many movies in one – it’s a detective story, in some ways a comedy and a psycho horror – it’s the way it flips between them that it draws you in a hits you in the jaw with surprises that will crawl under your skin and will leave a sour taste in your mouth. As the end credits rolled by there was a dead silence in the cinema as it stuck in what you just witnessed and it will weigh on your head for some time afterwards. Creepy is not Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s best but it definitely marks his return to the horror genre

Tendai