A landmark in the history of Japanese cinema, Cure was the breakthrough film for director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who would go on to make several further modern masterpieces in Pulse, Creepy and Tokyo Sonata. Released to critical acclaim in both the East and the West, this nerve-shredding thriller charts the hunt for a depraved serial killer in a bleak and decaying Tokyo. A series of murders have been committed by ordinary people who claim to have had no control over their actions, many of them having killed friends, co-workers or even their spouse. There are only two links between each crime: an X carved into the neck of each victim, and a mysterious stranger who seems to have had brief contact with the perpetrator a short period of time before each killing.