Cure and Silent Hill 2 and the Fear of Disability.
I finally got to see Kiyoshi Kurosawa's incredible 1997 mystery/psychological thriller Cure. First, it's an incredible heater of a film, I cannot recommend it more, but second, I couldn't help but feel the through line between it and one of the all time banger horror games, Silent Hill 2. Both have a deep sense of melancholy from loosely the same era of creation, they both have this otherworldly uncanny quality to a lot of stuff in them, and most importantly (to me) they both have men with sick wives, and men who fail those sick wives.
To be clear, my partner is sick, always will be sick and treatment has not really improved their quality of life much past "not miserable", and I've been there with them as this condition (I'm not gonna get into it here) progressed and began to effect both of us. I am still very happily married and I love them every bit as much as the day that we first met, but I won't say it's easy. Seeing these men who in some ways I can directly relate to (Takabe's wife and her constant forgetfulness was something I immediately could parse) is terrifying to me, because anyone whose seen these pieces of media through, know exactly how it ends.
To me the crux of some of the harshest horror in these two pieces of media is seeing these men whom at first I could easily parse as "just like me but in a not great way" continually spiral in regards to their own mental health is terrifying. I've been there, realizing that things will not get better, and the work that I can put in on this issue (my partner's illness) will literally never fix the issue, it's terrifying to see that and then see that the ending in both cases is these men concluding that spousal murder is the fix.
In the end, I look at Detective Takabe and James Sunderland and see men who viscerally disgust me, in large part because I recognize the darkness that they embody is something I could potentially become, but at the same time, they exist as examples that I am not failing, I am not slipping, I am still here being the best partner I can and more importantly we're both surviving every day.
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