Although Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa is best known for his horror films like Cure and Pulse, recent years have seen him operate in more dramatic territory. Kurosawa’s latest outing, Cloud, sees the filmmaker both return to form and push himself in exciting new ways, resulting in one of the most gripping thrillers of the year.
Cloud Review
Cloud follows a young man who makes a living reselling goods online — sometimes not in the most ethical ways — as he finds himself fighting for his life after a series of mysterious events occur. Although this seems like a simple premise, Kurosawa makes the most of it, adding plenty of intrigue to the movie in its just-over-two-hour runtime.
Although the title may seem like it lends itself to a dissection of online culture — as if it might be to the social media era what Pulse was for the Web1.0 generation — Cloud is actually much more of a takedown of consumerism and capitalism than it is of the internet. Of course, the internet plays a role in it, as Kurosawa seems fascinated by how it enables this wave of consumerism, but this lessened focus on modern technology keeps the commentary from feeling as immediately outdated as many satires of the modern online world often feel.
For much of the first half of Cloud, the allure is the mystery. It’s not a horror film in the sense of Kurosawa’s supernatural outings, nor even in a serial killer horror way like Cure, but he still imbues this thriller with a similar sense of dread. It’s a deceptively simple movie, creating discomfort in the moments of mundanity, only for them to be disrupted by a threat that feels incredibly real.
In the last hour, Kurosawa takes his craft to an entirely different level than we have seen him operate on before. The talky thriller of the first half gives way to a tense, exhilarating, action-packed finale. There’s not a ton of thematic heft to the back half, but the pacing is so breakneck, and the twists and turns so compelling that it would be hard not to be engaged by this portion of the film.
Kurosawa’s ability to build suspense is virtually unrivaled, and the technique on display here is awe-inspiring. A sequence in the second half creates a sense of claustrophobia that every home invasion movie could learn from, and the filmmaker’s command of spatial geography in the climactic action sequence has everything it needs to draw the viewer in.
However, as exciting as the movie is, what really brings Cloud home is its nuanced character work. Kurosawa approaches his characters with a lot of nuance. There aren’t heroes or villains. Even though many of the characters do things that aren’t conventionally likable, like scamming and violence, there’s not a lot of judgment levied against them for their actions. Instead, Kurosawa seems much more intrigued by the institutions that got them (on both sides) to this moment of desperation that we see in the conclusion.
Masaki Suda’s performance in the lead role is excellent. He shifts between deadpan, calm and collected, and utterly terrified in a matter of moments without ever feeling like he’s stretching credulity. It’s the type of role that thrives in how quiet it is. In fact, the only person in the ensemble who steals the scene is Daiken Okudaira, who is a perfect foil to Suda — but not in the ways you would expect.
Is Cloud worth watching?
While watching Cloud, it should be obvious that you are watching a master at work. At once, Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to genre (or at least genre-adjacent) cinema while also taking his form in new directions the filmmaker has never really explored before. As a result, this stands out as one of the finest works in the prolific auteur’s already impressive filmography.
Cloud played at the 2024 edition of Fantastic Fest, which ran September 19-26.
Cloud Fantastic Fest Review — Kiyoshi Kurosawa Delivers a Thoughtful, Explosive Action Thriller
Master filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa has crafted one of his finest films in Cloud, a tense, thought-provoking, exciting thriller that doesn’t let up in its two-hour runtime.
