The new film from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who gave us CURE (1997), PULSE (2001), and CREEPY (2016) amongst others is getting a UK cinema release through Blue Finch.
Yoshii (Masaki Suda) works in a factory but makes most of his money by being a scalper, buying up quantities of limited editions and fake products and then selling them at vastly inflated prices online. When his boss offers him a promotion Yoshii's response is to resign, move to an isolated house, and do his scalping full time.
However, unknown to Yoshii, there is a growing online community devoted to finding his true identity and his address with the intention of exacting a terrible punishment for how he has ripped them off. Eventually, a gang descends on his house, drugs him, and takes him to an abandoned factory to mete out revenge.
Interviewed about CLOUD, director Kurosawa said he deliberately made the character of Yoshii complex and ambiguous, such that while the men who come to torture him could be said to have good reasons, the second half of the film becomes an exercise in the viewer trying to decide who to root for, if any. Apparently the story itself was inspired by newspaper reports of violent attacks in Japan which, when investigated, were found to be the result of petty internet grievances that had been blown out of proportion.
The overall result is a film of two halves - the first demonstrating a fine sense of building dread as the character of Yoshii is developed to the extent that, while we understand what he does, it's difficult to feel any sympathy for him, and yet once he's tied to a chair and being threatened with a blow torch we do, or at least we probably should do. The main body of the second half then moves to being a lot like an action-packed Western-style shootout. You may not know how to feel during CLOUD, but chances are you'll have a lot to talk about afterwards. Here's a trailer:
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's CLOUD is in UK cinemas from Friday 25th April through Blue Finch Releasing
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