The Quiet Terror of Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Cure, Pulse, and Cloud

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s influence runs quietly but deeply through modern cinema. Directors like Martin Scorsese, Bong Joon-ho, and Ari Aster have all admired and been inspired by his uniquely unsettling, existential, and unforgettable horror films.

Kurosawa doesn’t make typical horror. The Japanese filmmaker crafts slow-burning nightmares and stories where dread seeps in slowly, into the corners of the frame, scene by scene, until you’re completely submerged.

I haven’t seen all of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films, but the ones I have seen have left an indelible mark on my psyche. Calling them “disturbing” barely scratches the surface. Kurosawa’s work often takes familiar genre tropes and reshapes them into something much more terrifying but also hauntingly beautiful.

His films aren’t about jump scares or easy answers. They’re about what’s left when rationality slowly dissolves and gives way to unpredictable, all consuming darkness. He imagines worlds where connection (digital and personal) fails, and when the systems we trust quietly collapse.

These aren’t just scary movies; they’re slow, atmospheric descents into unease — cinematic experiences that linger, like a bad dream you can’t shake. I call it Waking Nightmare Cinema, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa is its undisputed master.

While Kurosawa’s filmography spans everything from early made-for-video yakuza exploitation and television work to his later, critically acclaimed dramas, here I’m focusing on his horror and suspense films.

There’s a wide range of Kurosawa’s films available across streaming platforms. And while I’d argue his work is essential viewing for any serious film fan, it’s not always obvious where to begin. That’s what this post is for. I’m recommending three pretty accessible starting points for diving into the strange and dark world of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Waking Nightmare Cinema.

No spoilers here; just a quick walkthrough of what each film is about, why I’m recommending it, and where you can watch it.

Let’s start with one of his most well-known works: 2001's Pulse.

You might have heard of Pulse because of the terrible U.S. remake that hit theaters in 2006. Skip that. Kurosawa’s original is the essential version.

One of Kurosawa’s recurring fascinations is how the internet and technology are transforming society, often for the worse. Pulse is perhaps his most piercing take on this theme. The film explores the contrast between the internet’s promise of global connection and its darker potential: to isolate and numb its users, pulling their minds away from the physical world and leaving behind empty, rotting shells.

When it came out in 2001, Pulse was a horror ahead of its time. It was one of the first films to scrutinize online culture with an almost prophetic eye. Watching it today, it feels chillingly relevant. It plays like a ghostly warning: about screen addiction, about loneliness, and about the quiet horror of desperately seeking connection from a screen and finding an enveloping black void staring back.

Yes, it’s a bummer. But it’s also brilliant. If you’re looking for a chilling, atmospheric creepfest with a lingering emotional punch, Pulse more than delivers. It rides the early 2000s J-horror wave with all the expected stylings, but it goes deeper, crafting incredibly suspenseful horror cinema that’s as emotionally hollowing as it is terrifying.

The plot follows a group of young people in Tokyo tormented by malevolent forces leaking through their computer screens. The story unfolds slowly, creepily. The foreboding mood builds relentlessly. Every frame becomes loaded with tension and dread, and one nightmarish scene, in particular, stands out as a masterclass in suspense.

As of this video’s release, you can stream Pulse for free in the U.S. on The Roku Channel, Hoopla, and Plex. It’s also available on AMC Plus and for rental or purchase via Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and Fandango.

Next up is my personal favorite Kurosawa film: 1997’s slow, cerebral horror-crime thriller hybrid, Cure.

This one’s a landmark. It helped inspire the J-horror movement of the 2000s and influenced directors like Ari Aster and Bong Joon-ho. Even Martin Scorsese is a fan.

I’ve often called Cure a darker, more surreal cousin to David Fincher’s Se7en, but that doesn’t quite do it justice. Kurosawa’s film unfolds slowly with a brooding, tension-soaked tone. He probes more deeply into themes he would continue to explore in Pulse and beyond: alienation, cultural dissonance, and the unsettling void that creeps in where meaning should exist in the face of death.

It’s an atmospheric, slow-burn crime story centered on a Tokyo detective (played by the incredible Kōji Yakusho) investigating a series of brutal murders. The deeper the detective digs, the more chilling and confounding the case becomes.

Each murder carries the same grisly signature, but each murder is committed by a different person who seems to have no motive, no memory, and no connection to the other killers. And when confronted with the horrific reality of their crimes, the murderers express a sense of shock that leads to total psychological breakdown. Husbands inflict self-harm after realizing they’ve murdered their wives, men fall apart after discovering they’ve killed long-time coworkers. And the bodies and ruined lives keep piling up, seemingly out of nowhere.

This chaos is echoed in the detective’s personal life. His wife is slipping into a similar fog of memory loss and derangement. And even after he identifies a possible mastermind behind the killings, nothing seems to adds up. There’s no clear motive, no satisfying logic, and more existential questions pop up around every corner.

There are scenes in Cure that are conventionally scary and loaded with suspense, but the real horror comes from realizing that the sense of emptiness and dread that fills the detective’s mind mirrors contemporary collective anxieties: What happens when horror isn’t just senseless, but empty? What do we make of violence that repeats without warning or purpose? What do we do when societal bonds seem to be collapsing out of nowhere? When familiar patterns are broken and lives are lost as a result? Who do we trust when our institutions, from one day to the next, have gone from protecting us to actively harming us?

Cure is terrifying, not because of jump scares, but because of the existential dread at its core. It’s a police procedural steeped in isolation and hopelessness. Kurosawa turns up the tension with beautiful but bleak and spare visuals and a droning hypnotic soundscape that will envelop you into the film’s hazy, dark, dreamlike world.

Sounds fun, right?

You can rent or buy Cure in the U.S. on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and Fandango, and stream it on the Criterion Channel.

Finally, let’s talk about Kurosawa’s latest film, 2025's Cloud.

This is the only Kurosawa film I’ve seen in theaters, and watching it with a crowd was a blast. Cloud might be his most crowd-pleasing film to date, relatively speaking. It still features a tense, slow build and wrestles with deep themes like isolation, revenge, and moral decay, but it also has a surprisingly sharp sense of humor and some of the most intense violence of his career. Think Reservoir Dogs, but filtered through Kurosawa’s lens of quiet, building dread.

Cloud centers on a factory worker, played by Masaki Suda, who moonlights as an online reseller. As he finds success flipping gadgets and collectibles for profit, he slowly loses his moral compass and his grip on reality.

Kurosawa charts his descent with chilling precision. The more detached Suda’s character becomes, the more resentment he draws from fellow resellers, small business owners, and online obsessives.

The film touches on everything from the emptiness of resell culture to the disturbing rise of doxxing. And as tensions boil over, Cloud transforms into a brutal, blood-soaked thriller about vengeance in the age of digital anonymity.

It’s gripping, it’s unsettling, and it's disturbingly relevant. And while it’s filled with sharp bursts of violence, what cuts deepest is the film’s quiet assertion that there will always be people willing to embody the worst impulses of the digital world, and others ready to make them pay for it.

You can find Cloud still playing in theaters in limited release and soon on Apple TV+.

I think Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s work is some of the most unsettling and visually compelling cinema out there. If you’re even a little curious about horror and suspense that hits on a psychological and level, these films are absolutely worth your time.

Let me know in the comments which Kurosawa film is your favorite or which one you’re watching first.

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