Kuroneko

Kuroneko (藪の中の黒猫, 1968) is a landmark Japanese horror and fantasy film you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Kaneto Shindo. Set during the Sengoku period of civil war, it begins with soldiers burning down a farmhouse after killing the women inside. From that night on, samurai travelling through the bamboo grove near the Rashomon Gate don't make it back.

The governor sends a young warrior to investigate. What he finds there is not entirely unknown to him. Kichiyemon Nakamura, Nobuko Otowa, and Kiwako Taichi lead the cast. Cinematographer Kiyomi Kuroda shoots the grove in near-total darkness, lit just enough to suggest what the eye shouldn't quite see.

Shindo made this the same year as Onibaba and the two films form a pair — both rooted in folk tradition, both set among women surviving in wartime, both quietly furious about what that survival costs. Kuroneko is the stranger and more lyrical of the two. Stream it online on iFILM.