Popular reviews

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★½

  "What ghost would dare hate us?"

  masculinity punished and vengeful in failure, female desire empowered by death. putting out fires with gasoline.

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  Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★★ 3

  Haunting ghost story of loss, love and revenge! Exceptionally beautiful cinematography! Like the supernatural seductresses the film seduces you, draws you closer and captures you.. holding you firmly with its icy vice like grip! There is no escape!

  While revenge was a rampant and savory morsel it was the unexpected moments of love and melancholy that ripped at the very fabric of your being!

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★½ 8

  Thirteenth Review for The Collab Weekly Movie Watch

  Many cultures believe to this day that so much adverse energy can affect not only a person, but a complete physical space. In a way that is the basis of this fantastic psychological horror film brought to us by the same mind behind the underrated "Onibaba".

  However, the film suddenly change its course halfway through and reveals a bigger picture, revealing that the true theme of the film is guilt. Not to get into major spoilers, but once we learn more about this new character who seeks to take down these vengeful entities, the original incident acquires an even darker and more disturbing dimension. Hence these killer specters become these manifestations of…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★

  80

  What a ghost story. Horrified by the violence brought on by men, and fascinated by the echoes of history and revenge. Often its dreamy, repetitive aesthetic takes on the nature of an endless loop, a trap set off time and time again, with man's evil confronted by the agency of women. Eventually it complicates its narrative, with heartbreaking results, but the first act is a perfect horror film in miniature. The images practically float across the screen.

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  Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★★

  When you miss your dead wife so much any pussy will do.

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  Review by Terése Flynn ★★★★ 2

  In Kuroneko the samurai isn't portrayed as the honorable warrior we more than often see them as in movies. No, they are opportunistic low-life men, pillaging and raping when they're not in combat. And two of their victims are a poor mother and daughter-in-law. As they lay in the ashes of their burnt down house, they make a pact with the evil God. A pact that allows them to take human form, but only if they vow to suck the blood - and life out of every samurai in their path.

  It wasn't yesterday I watched Shindo's Onibaba and fell in love with it. Still I sure recognize the director's craftsmanship in Kuroneko. Even some of the lightheartedness and humor…

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  Review by Sam ★★★★½

  An alternative meaning to the phrase "crazy cat lady"

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 3

  I like kitties.

  This is a dark revenge film, but something about the supernatural element to it turns it into something closer to justice. With ghosts involved, there is an underlying implication that this is cosmic revenge, not human, and therefore, cosmic justice--something natural.

  The other idea that comes up here is the reputation of black cats. While I appreciate a good supernatural tale of an animal with magic powers, and I respect folklore enough to appreciate where this is coming from, I would be remiss in my duties as a friend of a cat doctor if I did not stress that that's all this is: myth. Lies. Untruths! Black cats are not at all dangerous, unlucky, evil, or otherwise…

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 6

  "War sends everything up in flames."

  Kuroneko is a Japanese haunted house story from the perspective of the ghosts haunting the house. It a film about a dark time in Japan's history, when the real "haunted house" was the nation of Japan itself, and the ghosts it's haunted by were not the innocent villagers that died, but the samurai who raped and killed them. It is both a reversal of the tropes of the horror genre and a reversal of historical revisionism which recast violent, savage samurai—and the heartless noblemen who sponsored them—as national heroes.

  The opening scene is marvelous in both the way it sets up these reversals and just in the striking beauty of its visual imagery. Ragged,…

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  Review by sakana1 ★★★★ 28

  Though its atmosphere haunts us all, the horror of Kuroneko is nevertheless an unusually specific one, applicable only to one class of people. No one else is threatened by the violent, bloodthirsty beings who rip out the throats of samurai — indeed, many of the others benefit from the actions of the unseen creatures, stripping the bodies of dead men for clothing, coins, and valuables. For those forced to live near them, the samurai are the danger, not the unseen teeth and hunger. If anything, a being that stalks samurai is (whisper it) an ally.

  Themselves assaulted and murdered by samurai, the ravenous female spirts bedeviling the class kin of their attackers, create chaos by claiming revenge against them all…

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  Review by Ethan Colburn ★★★★

  A ghost movie, a family movie, and a rape-revenge movie, Kuroneko draws you in through its haunting visuals and jarring soundtrack, then becomes unexpectedly morally complex.

  This feels so much like Sergio Leone, and I can't help but wonder if Japanese directors were borrowing back some of what they loaned to Italy. The score and screeching sound effects feel like sounds Morricone was experimenting with at the time, yet the plot, independent of setting, feels uniquely Japanese. Samurai never question the existence of evil spirits, and yet are told to go take down something they know is uniquely elusive. The effects aren't impossible, but the quick editing, and flash cuts to unnerving images make them particularly effective.

  So glad I got to see this in theaters.

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  Review by Jerry McGlothlin ★★★★ 3

  Bloody vengeance has never been so beautiful. Kuroneko is folk horror done right, with a misty mise-en-scène reminiscent of a dark Kabuki tale and some of the most exquisitely arresting and aesthetically stunning cinematography I have seen in quite some time. From the first glimpse of the opening credits to the final frame, there is an emanation of dread and macabre wonder, as we venture through bamboo forests outside the gate of Rajōmon, where various samurai are disappearing into thin air and found bloodied, bitten on the neck amidst the burnt ruins of a peasant home by what the authorities can only describe as a ghastly figure roaming the pitch black woods; plucking out weary ronin and disposing of them…