“Hell is waiting for you. I’ll be your nightmare forever,” Yoshii (Masaki Suda) is told at gunpoint in one of the most thrilling sequences of Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s career in “Cloud.”
It’s a line, though, that could apply across the Japanese filmmaker’s work, whether the specters in the machine stalking a post-Y2K digital realm in “Pulse” or the elusive serial killer who seems to operate by hypnosis in “Cure,” one of the very best horror movies ever made.
“Cloud” is Kurosawa’s first movie to weld his techno anxieties to a Western framework, as his movie about a sociopath-adjacent internet reseller and hoarder culminates in what I wouldn’t quite call a glorious shootout, but certainly the grandest action set piece yet from the filmmaker. “Cloud” is out in U.S. theaters from Sideshow/Janus Films on July 18, and IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer below.
Suda, who voiced the heron in the Japanese version of Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron,” leads “Cloud,” which was Japan’s submission for the 2025 International Feature Oscar, premiered at Venice 2024, and will next play the Japan Cuts festival in New York City. Per the distributors’ synopsis, the film follows “an ambitious, yet directionless, young factory worker from Tokyo who side hustles in the murky realm of black market reselling, cheating buyers and sellers alike. After swindling his way into loads of cash, Yoshii gradually attempts to disconnect from humanity, moving out of the city, shunning his girlfriend, and entrusting duties to his new, devoted assistant. Before long, his life is plagued by a series of mysterious, sinister incidents that threaten to upend his success and bring about a most violent demise. A master of carefully simmering tension to a bloody crescendo, Kurosawa delivers a searing portrait of digital greed and vengeance.”
So yes, action thriller elements or not, this is a Kurosawa movie through and through. He’s best known for his horror movies — and you must track down his NFT-only 2024 short “Chime,” about an emotionless culinary arts teacher haunted by a disembodied humming noise — but he’s mastered other genres, like the romantic melodrama “Journey to the Shore” or the sprawling family drama with “Tokyo Sonata,” both Cannes winners.
Like most Kurosawa characters, Yoshii isn’t comfortable with a life of “conventional happiness,” as described by a senior colleague at the factory (Masataka Kubota). He blows up his life in tragicomic Coens-esque fashion, leading his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), when asked why she’s moving out by Yoshii’s assistant, “Tell him I was fucking bored.”
IndieWire’s David Ehrlich also raved about “Cloud” circa Venice last year, writing, “‘Cloud’ updates the filmmaker’s signature focus for a modern world that’s enmeshed in an infinite (but invisible) network of small cruelties and bitter grievances — a network so ubiquitous that even the better angels of our nature might drive us straight into hell. Almost too mundane to care about until it becomes impossible to stop watching for much the same reason, this riveting and highly unusual shoot-em-up finds Kurosawa returning to his roots, only to discover that psychological terror isn’t quite as abstract as it used to be.”
Elsewhere, this year’s Janus slate has included Alain Guiraudie’s “Misericordia,” David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds,” and Jia Zhangke’s “Caught by the Tides.” Coming up are Ira Sachs’ “Peter Hujar’s Day,” Bi Gan’s “Resurrection,” Lav Diaz’s “Magellan,” and Hlynur Pálmuson’s “The Love That Remains.”
Watch the trailer for “Cloud,” an IndieWire exclusive, below.
