Cloud

Kurosawa’s latest film is a chilly and mystifying expression of a modern malevolence which hangs over our lives — like a cloud, if you will — worsened by constant digital connection.

Playing like a slicker, more vicious riff on Ben Wheatley’s Mexican stand-off film, Free Fire, the climactic gunplay chaos is all the more chilling for the impotence ultimately behind so much of the rage being vented.

The final half-hour seems to be a neo-western style melee which seems to go on for ever. Odd … and unrewarding.

Unfolding at a hauntingly subdued register before unleashing its pent-up tension during its final act, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud skewers the anonymity that characterizes our presence in online spaces.

“Cloud” is certainly watchable, especially due to the opening scenes and Suda’s skillful performance.

Cloud is a sophisticated send-up of social commerce culture...

By the usual standards of J-horror virtuoso Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Cloud is impressively understated. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t downright eerie.

Bitter self-reflection, coupled with such bold experimentation with action, tone, and genre, makes Cloud’s brooding, brutal tale of resellers wreaking havoc on humanity one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s best films to date.

[Cloud] presents itself as a traditional psychological thriller, but it quickly surprises with its unusual choices and careful attention to detail. [Full review in Spanish]

Cloud is brilliant until it’s frustrating. It’s an evocatively shot exploration of how the digital world impacts us on a personal and a wider societal level. But it’s a tale of two seemingly different films.