As he worked on a documentary he called The Curse, paranormal expert Masafumi Kobayashi (Jin Muraki) disappeared, leaving behind his burned home and his dead wife Keiko (Miyako Hanai). All that is left is the movie he was making.

The Curse concerns Junko Ishii (Tomono Kuga), a woman whose apartment created sounds of crying children. After she moves, Kobayashi and his cameraman break in to find dead birds just as the neighbor and her daughter die in a car crash. Another person has gone missing, a psychic girl by the name of Kana Yano (Rio Kanno) who was taken away by electroplasmic worms, according to another psychic, Mitsuo Hori (Satoru Jitsunashi).

The truth is that Ishii was the daughter of a priest who performed a ritual in 1978 to rid a village of a demon named Kagutaba. Ishii was possessed and has been stealing babies and performing abortions in the years since, as the demon infiltrates the minds of people like actress Marika Matsumoto and making people hang themselves.

If that’s not enough, Ishii tries to take the psychic girl and feed her abortions to summon the demon, which ends up with her hung, the girl dead and Ishii’s son alive. He’s adopted by Kobayashi but we learn — spoilers — in the end credits scene that Hori has escaped from an institution and beats the boy with a rock, believing that he is the demon. Kana’s ghost arrives and Kobayashi’s wife sets herself on fire and the apartment burns as the videotape ends.

I usually hate found footage, but director and writer Koji Shiraishi has such a talent that he makes it work for this film. I loved his movie A Slit-Mouthed Woman and the weirdness of this feels real, like going through the channels late at night and ending up on something that keeps you awake for the entire night.

Noroi: The Curse is one of the films on Arrow’s new J-Horror Rising set. It has extras including new audio commentary by film critic Julian Singleton, new interviews with director Koji Shiraishi and producer Taka Ichise, video essays by Japanese horror specialist Lindsay Nelson and Japanese cinema expert Amber T, and featurettes including How to Protect Yourself Against Curses and the Urgent report! Pursuing the Truth about Kagutaba!! TV Special. You also get half an hour of deleted scenes, trailers, TV ads and an image gallery.

You can buy it from MVD.