The Curse (Japan 2025: Dir Kenichi Ugana)

Ugana is fast developing a reputation for injecting new blood - pun very much intended - into J Horror's slightly tired reputation. and for his latest he has knowingly plundered the 'cursed technology' theme, which stretches back nearly 30 years to Hideo Nakata's Ringu.

Riko (Yukino Kaizu) works in a hair salon and, like millions of her generation, spends a large part of her social life on phone apps, specifically Instagram. In the apartment she shares with Airi (Mimi Shao) she expresses concern about recent posts from her friend Shufen (Shih-ting Lin), now living in Taiwan, which seem uncharacteristically angry. Airi suggests that Riko contacts her ex Jiahao (Yu Teng Yang), who remains in touch with Shufen. But he has some surprising news; the girl died six months previously, her corpse found on a beach.

Thinking that their friend's account must have been hacked, Airi contacts 'Shufen' and in return receives an odd video which shows a 'paper doll' (a paper cutout of a body with the photograph of the intended victim for a head) being mysteriously hammered to a bloody pulp; and the photograph is of Riko's flatmate.

This is the jumping off point for a movie that spends its first half hour setting itself up as a familiar - perhaps overfamiliar - story of a curse being transmitted through a modern medium; there's even a suggestion of the traditional long haired yurei phantom. But whereas the films of Nakata - and his ilk - offer a restrained if creepy version of the spook story, Ugana has already shown us a very Aster-like prologue in which a previous victim of the curse, screaming their lungs out while running along a street, ends up in contact with - and decapitated by - a passing truck; he's clearly not messing about.

So Riko journeys to Taiwan, a country perhaps more steeped in tradition than modern day Japan, and of course ends up on the wrong end of a 'paper doll' video. There's a lot of coughed up blood, some rather suspect CGI manifestations, dodgy exorcists and a denouement that suggests the director has something to say about phone culture and the ageing process. 

Despite some rather untidy plot elements and it being slightly all over the place, I enjoyed Ugana's rug pull version of a familiar story; I'm guessing he was having a lot of fun delivering a movie whose real sense of humour only becomes apparent in its closing scenes, a cautionary tale not afraid of its over the topness.

The Curse is available to stream from 13 July.