Rating: 😈📹💀

Good horror should make you feel like dogshit. It’s all fun and games to cheer when Laurie gets one over on Michael, or sigh in relief once Suzy flees the academy, but I’m only really satisfied when I come away with my blood drained and gut punched, feeling as though I might flinch at open doorways in the night for a week or so. Everyone’s different, but personally my most effective disquieters are well-done found footage flicks and nihilistic slow-burners, say Blair Witch Project for the former and Texas Chain Saw for the latter. Or maybe, Lake Mungo on one hand and Ringu on the other — in short, any experience where horror is predicated on an active, powerful, and unparsable force which is indifferent at best and hostile at worst.

Be it curses, an alleged witch, or the cogs of destiny acting through some barbecue enthusiasts, I can’t get enough of films where people stumble into a situation they can barely comprehend, much less control. It’s classic fear of the unknown magnified to a monolithic degree; the concept of helplessness blown up and plastered across narratives where the stars themselves want you dead. Most people would just call this “cosmic horror” and be done with it, but I would like to thoroughly divorce myself from possible implications of Lovecraft and his racist aliens.

Anyway, imagine my delight upon discovering two more movies which perfectly marry the methodical, murky nature of found footage to an overwhelming sense of oppressive, intestine-knotting dread. The films in question are a double feature from Japanese director Koji Shiraishi: 2005’s cult classic Noroi: The Curse, and its 2009 sister film, Occult. In addition to both belonging on your Halloween watchlist, both are mockumentaries about supernatural phenomena, both follow directors who get in too deep, and both roll credits over the pervasive feeling that you’ve been whomped with a black, sticky sledgehammer. In other words, pristine horror filmmaking.

I've touched on Noroi before, but I'm so obsessed with this buffet of cosmic hatred that I felt it essential to dive in again. Here a direct-to-video Unsolved Mysteries-type filmmaker investigates a supposed curse, in what ominously (say the line, Noroi!) turns out to be his last production. What starts with strange sounds and odd neighbors quickly devolves into a screeching whirlwind of psychic children and ghost sightings and demonic folklore and an assortment of other stomach-flipping unpleasantries which coalesce and glue together like a dripping, crimson boulder prepared to roll you the fuck over. To compare the navigation of Noroi to falling down a rabbit hole is too placid. It's more like having your soul sucked into a black hole and trying your best not to get crushed by the density. To quote another favorite, the bad vibes are so thick you need an Aqua-Lung to breathe.

J-horror staple Ringu is a good point of comparison for Noroi: both have an obsession with mental powers, regional history, and the enduring nature of a good old-fashioned curse. But whereas Ringu is measured and cold, Noroi is immediately panicked and desperate, flailing about in a black flame which quickly becomes too hot to handle. It is not simply a dreadful film but also an unpleasant one; in the same way observing a trapped animal is unpleasant, or poking at an open wound. Very early on Noroi finds the oozing sore and prods for a reaction — one of the first major moments of horror involves the unscrambling of a bizarre audio clip to reveal the pathetic, desperate cries of babies underneath. Even at an early stage, you already know: this doesn't end well, and Noroi is more than willing to drive the nail in.

Maybe the most compelling element of Noroi is the focus on form to deliver function, with the majority of the film taking place across disparate, fragmentary chunks. Threads are pulled together and woven from all manner of material: TV variety shows, filmed lectures, idol documentaries, historical footage, and more. The effect is that of a massive conspiratorial web, or observing the strokes of a mural before you can puzzle out the final picture. It's not just a piece-by-piece mystery, but also the brick-by-brick laying of a wall that you can't register until it's too late. By the time you realize what's happening you're already trapped, and left alone in the blackness with an evil, evil film. To say much else about Noroi would involve spoiling the experience, and this is one stairway to hell you should walk without knowing what's ahead.

Occult arrives four years later, just enough time to crawl out from the scorched-earth impact crater of Noroi. Though it follows many of the same themes and obsessions as its older sibling, the film ends up thoroughly disquieting for very different reasons. Again presented as a documentary, this time helmed by director Shiraishi as himself, Occult begins as an investigation into a random act of violence. As the narrative peels back, it becomes clear this is part of something much, much bigger than a simple stabbing. Shiraishi digs deeper, his subject becomes stranger, and it all climaxes with the gaiety of a snuff film. More straightforward than Noroi? To be sure, but no less stomach-churning.

While Noroi often feels like jumping down a series of disconnected hyperlinks, Occult’s greatest strength is that it follows a more linear path, and thus remains more focused. Man makes documentary, man meets man, shit happens, end of film. With this structure in place, Shiraishi is able to provide pinpoint tension in contrast to Noroi’s ambient dread — that was a film where you never knew quite what would occur, whereas this is a movie where we are told, in no uncertain terms, exactly what's going to happen and spend a good chunk of time waiting for it, on edge, sweat rolling down our spines. Everyone in Noroi is always desperate, worried, despondent, or otherwise in emotional turmoil. In Occult, our subjects are as clear-headed as the sky above Shibuya, which renders the events all the more chilling.

It could be argued, I’m sure, that Occult is a film with Something To Say. There's a lot floating around here about the complicity of filmmakers in the violence they present, and the ways in which capitalism shapes identity, but at the heart of it is the same cosmic aggression which fuels Noroi’s dark furnace. In that first offering, the human characters are pawns in a ritualistic, years-spanning trap they barely perceive, much less comprehend. Here a man experiences “miracles” from an outside force he takes to be God, and starts listening once that force begins speaking. For a found footage horror film, it goes about as well as you'd expect.

It’s really astounding how well the fake documentary works as a vessel for Shiraishi’s cosmic horror; it surprises me I haven’t seen more in this style since both the genre and the form trade in terrors lurking on the edge of human perception. The alien presence hovering just beyond your mind’s grasp might manifest as an easily missed visual blip, or the imperceptible demon as a garbled and distorted form. Just as the scares often take place on the periphery of perception, the films themselves take place on the periphery of a cosmic horror narrative. More often than not what we see are the ripples and not the impact itself; characters left to pick up pieces and attempt to construct what in the world could possibly be occurring. In both Noroi and Occult, we arrive way too late for our presence to make any difference in the proceedings — essentially, we’re just viewing the final dominos as they're knocked over; brought into a mystery too late and too helpless to solve it.

I should mention that whatever punches Shiraishi pulls throughout the two films are thoroughly made up for in their conclusions. Not that there's many — it's hard to say movies which feature children in distress and worm gods and possessions and severed heads are holding back. But Noroi’s conclusion is as brutal as it is inevitable, and the ending moments of Occult are so utterly bold they made me cackle. I refuse to spoil exactly what shakes loose, but I’ll stress that you should run, not walk, to your first or next viewings of these particular misanthropic barn burners before you know anything else. Listen, I’ll even point you in the right direction: both Noroi and Occult are just sort of hanging out on YouTube. If it’s a selling point, I'll say that Occult is the only horror film I've seen which features Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as a plot beat.

Between these movies, Shiraishi presents a thunderously bleak picture of our place in the cosmos. Down one path is the world influenced by an unfeeling, malicious force which will indiscriminately consume you and all you love. Down the other is a celestial presence which, when reaching out to the human race, does so only through suffering and malice. Both are wildly different yet essentially similar visions of hell. There's a constant sense in these films, Noroi especially, that you're being pulled into the mud simply by watching these strange and murky offerings. Is it the way inky video footage could always turn up more forbidden secrets? Is it the hostile sound design which disarms you right off the bat? Perhaps it’s the bummer endings, or simply their single-minded obsession with rancid vibes? Whatever the reason, you don't come away from them feeling good about yourself. Like I said: pristine horror.

NOROI & OCCULT Prove The Universe Hates You