Kiyoshi Kurosawa originally titled the film Dendoushi, meaning «Evangelist.» While production was underway, the 1995 Tokyo subwa…

Kiyoshi Kurosawa originally titled the film Dendoushi, meaning «Evangelist.» While production was underway, the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack carried out by the Aum Shinrikyo cult occurred. There were immediate concerns about suggesting a religious cult connection to the murders in the story. A producer at Daiei Film proposed Cure as a replacement. The title was changed. Kurosawa on what drew him to the project: «I watched a lot of American horror movies growing up, and I had wanted to make a movie in that genre for some years. Then the growth in popularity of genre films made it easier for me to get the project financed and produced.» Some of the hospital scenes were filmed at a disused Fisheries Research Institute in Tsukishima. The same building was used the following year as the primary shooting location for Hirokazu Koreeda’s After Life (1998). The film is regarded as Kurosawa’s international breakthrough and one of the defining works of the J-horror wave of the late 1990s. Film: Cure (1997)