REVIEWS AND PRESS

"NYT CRITICS' PICK - Grabs hold of you fast and tight right from start ... As it slides between realism and extreme artifice, using cinematic and theatrical devices, Kuroneko becomes increasingly, pleasurably difficult to predict. It’s alternately abstract and down to earth, recognizable and strange, and consistently surprising." - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

"DON'T MISS THIS MASTERPIECE OF JAPANESE CINEMA! A powerful, haunting, and almost unbearably tense film, part ghost story, part Samurai movie, and part revenge melodrama." - New York Magazine

"Overflows with evocative and atmospheric imagery ... Kuroneko unfolds like a dream, and at the same time, Shindo infuses the film with a scathing political subtext." - Tony Timpone, Fangoria

"FOUR STARS - A MUCH DESERVED REVIVAL! Feels remarkably in tune with the last few waves of supernatural J-horror ... This tale of vengeful ghosts will cast a spell on you." - David Fear, Time Out NY

"Nippo-Gothic horror fables have a long tradition of proto-feminist outrage ... Kaneto Shindô’s Kuroneko (1968), finally making its New York premiere, may take the cake." - Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice

"THREE AND-A-HALF STARS! Ravenously paranormal." - Joseph Jon Lanthier, Slant Magazine

"A masterpiece of sustained atmosphere ... Shindo manipulates space with hallucinatory sophistication." - Henry Stewart, The L Magazine

"No Halloween slasher flick can match the artistry on display in this 1968 Japanese ghost story ... The beautiful print does justice to the austere black-and-white palette of director Kaneto Shindo, who strips everything down to its poetic essence." - Steve Dollar, The Wall Street Journal

"Janus Films' beautiful new 35mm print of Kuroneko might make a case for a reevaluation of Shindo. At the very least, it should rattle you senseless." - Chris Cabin, Filmcritic.com

"Surprising ... Shindo employs a dizzying array of flamboyant techniques: moving sets, jump cuts, slo-mo trancelike dances and acrobatics, sharp chiaroscuro lighting, sheets of fog, theatrical spotlights. These flourishes may be influenced by Noh theater, but their execution is very much modern." - Michael Joshua Rowin, Artforum.com

"Elegantly dream-like ... A visual feast of billowing curtains, rustling kimonos and seductive shadows behind scrims, all infinitely sensual and menacing to the same degree." - Maitland McDonagh, Film Journal International

"THREE AND-A-HALF STARS! You know you're in good hands from the opening image." - Ty Burr, The Boston Globe

"GRADE: A - Ethereally beautiful ... Shindo’s expressionistic wizardry turns this ghost story into pure screen poetry." - James Verniere, The Boston Herald

"A feverish vision that makes almost everything surrounding it in theaters at the moment look sickly and stifled ... horror fans will feel as though they've encountered some long-hidden touchstone." - Jim Ridley, The Nashville Scene

"A perfect film." - Charles Mudede, The Stranger

"A CLASSIC ... this film begets chills with its nuances of Noh." - Yayoi Lena Winfrey, International Examiner

"One of Japan's spookiest and most thought-provoking horror films." - Bill White, The Seattle Post Globe

"SHOULD NOT BE MISSED ... a chilling, hypnotic, memorable, just plain fun film experience." - Michael Bracey, Three Imaginary Girls

"One of the very best films about a romantic encounter of the eerie kind ... strange and stirring." - Jason Anderson, The Toronto Star

"FOUR STARS ... Shindo subverts the vengeful-ghost genre with an undercurrent of bittersweet, doomed romance. It’s hard to believe this movie’s been lost for more than four decades." - Norman Wilner, NOW Magazine

"What is thrilling about Kuroneko is its embrace of the unknown … there's a hushed, creepy quality to the film, almost as if it's a ghost that is shimmering before us." - Chris Hewitt, The Saint Paul Pioneer Press

"A masterpiece of quietly creepy Japanese horror … breathtaking in its eerie grace." - DCist

"The story is memorable and the visuals elegant, thanks to widescreen black-and-white cinematography and a dancelike sense of movement." - Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post