Creepy (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Creepy (2016) – K. Kurosawa

After a case goes bad, Takakura leaves the police force and becomes a criminology professor.  But when a former colleague asks for his assistance, he can’t help but get sucked into investigating a cold case (the disappearance of three members of a local family), despite his wife’s hope that he would stay out of it.  In fact, he and his wife Yasuko (Yûko Takeuchi) had moved to a new neighbourhood to get a fresh start after he changed careers.  However, their new neighbours are distinctly unfriendly or awkward and weird.  Nevertheless, Yasuko grows closer to their strange next-door neighbour Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa) who may be harbouring a secret that links him to the cold case.  Despite this intriguing set-up in line with earlier genre successes from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (e.g., Cure, 1997), the subtitles let me down (seemingly created using Google Translate) and I suspect that I missed some important nuances.  For example, Yasuko’s motivations and behaviour seem to alter strangely without notice – although this may be due to some mysterious powers exerting influence on her (not unheard of in Kurosawa’s films which often include spooky and supernatural elements, hence this title).  I’m sure things must be much more coherent for native speakers.  (That said, Kurosawa has not always wanted to connect the dots in the past).  So, if you can find a proper source, this is likely a solid entry in the morbid serial killer police procedural genre.