Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been a staple of Japanese and International cinema since his breakout hit, Cure, in 1997. Since then, he has made nearly a movie a year, consistently churning out films that are always a must-see…if you can view them. In his long and storied career, it has been hard to view his work outside of Japan, as he rarely gets U.S distribution. Thankfully, Janus Films and Sideshow will be releasing this film for North American distribution. Cloud is similar to his critically acclaimed hit Pulse from 2001, tackling themes related to internet usage and community. Cloud takes an opposite approach from Pulse and shows how real people on the internet can come together to do unimaginable horrors to you as a person. 

Cloud follows an internet reseller named Yoshii, who lives a quiet, simple life in Tokyo. Yoshii makes a living by selling counterfeits of popular designer products and scamming buyers with ‘a good deal.’ His business becomes so successful that he and his girlfriend move out of the city and into a small lake town community, where he hires an assistant named Sano (Daiken Okudaira). As time goes on, enough people come to realize they are being scammed, and they come for revenge. Where Kurosawa shines is in how he shoots his action set pieces. It is a great reflection on how the internet has warped individual minds to make them do things they never would have dreamed of doing if their anonymity weren’t protected behind a screen. 

These themes are greatly woven in as Kurosawa is able to reflect on the dawn of the internet and how it changed people. In the beginning, people used the internet to escape the world, and now they use it to find like-minded individuals who boost their worst ideas with no visible consequences. Kurosawa elegantly responds to this phenomenon. He does it in a way that is also accessible to all audiences, making a real crowd-pleaser where you are rooting for Yoshii.  

While this script is both action-packed and serious, it also has surprisingly funny moments. Making me laugh quite a few times, Kurosawa knows where to perfectly place a joke within the context of this movie. It is black comedy at its finest that expertly toes the line. Along with the script, his direction is a standout, especially his choice to linger in certain spaces after scenes have essentially ended. Letting us sit with the tension and build a great connection with our main protagonist. 

Kurosawa has always been a master of tension, and it is no different here. His editing is a highlight with scenes that are, at first, perfectly ordinary, and slowly, something becomes off. Whether that be someone following our main character Yoshii (Masaki Suda) on the sidewalk, someone watching from the back of a bus he rides, or slight noises he hears when he wakes up in the middle of the night. 

The score heightens the unsettling atmosphere. It doesn’t slowly build throughout the scenes; it will come out of nowhere, bursting with such a loudness as a way to amplify the shot’s creepiness. It’s very smart filmmaking that Kurosawa is accustomed to, and it is a return to form for what put him on the International map. 

It is exciting that Cloud is getting international distribution because, like Cure and Pulse, this should propel Kurosawa back into the cultural zeitgeist. This is a reminder that he is one of the best working filmmakers of our time. I’m truly excited to see where Kurosawa goes in this stage of his career, exploring the current state of the world, and I hope he gets the chance to show his thoughts in future features. 

Review Courtesy of Jacob Diedenhofer

Feature Image Credit to Janus Films and Sideshow via Deadline