As far as revolutionary filmmakers tend to go, Kiyoshi Kurosawa is shockingly absent from the conversations around which contemporary directors are the most original and innovative, despite showing his prowess for both bespoke narratives and incredible technical skills, which have factored into many of his films over the years, and positioned him as arguably amongst the greatest artists of his generation. He has been afforded something of a career reassessment in recent months, primarily because the past year has brought him back to the public consciousness, based on the three films he directed in the last year alone, each one a fascinating and daring piece all on its own, and which work together to create quite a disconcerting view of everyday life for ordinary protagonists in situations that are secretly beyond horrifying. The centrepiece of the three films is usually considered to be Cloud, which serves as the longest of the entries into this loosely connected triptych, and the one that contains the most effort in terms of both storytelling and realisation of its underlying ideas. The premise is effortlessly simple: it follows a young man who has started quite a lucrative business working as an online reseller, which puts him in a position where he can finally consider leaving his mediocre factory job, particularly since the earnings he makes through a single day’s sales rivals his monthly salary doing menial labour that neither enriches nor deepens his life and perspective. However, he soon comes to realize that there is a sinister side to any segment of society, and it isn’t long before he runs afoul of the exact people he overtook on his journey to the top, leading to a brutal and harrowing series of confrontations in which his life begins to spiral out of control. Cloud is a magnificently disturbing piece of filmmaking that conveys a deep sense of despair that is definitive of the director’s work, and which is weaves liberally throughout this film, a bold and bombastic combination of several genres, all working in tandem to create a disquieting existentialist horror that is as terrifying as it is fascinating.

The themes that govern Kurosawa’s work are not always made very clear, and he often seems to be approaching these stories as an opportunity to observe how the viewer pieces together the various fragments of what is almost always a more complex puzzle of a film, and which is the precise point in which they realize what these films are actually about, which contributes to his status as one of the most intriguing experimental filmmakers of the contemporary era. He’s the antithesis of those more generous filmmakers that lay their conceptual foundations bare at the very beginning, and its often entirely possible to watch one of his films without having even the slightest understanding of what it means until the very end (or even at all, in some cases), which makes for rigorous, entertaining viewing that is perfectly justifiable by the brilliant writing and execution of the central ideas. At a cursory glance, Cloud seems to be quite a detailed examination of the trials and tribulations of the online retail community, taking the form of a tense drama in which a young and ambitious entrepreneur causes friction between the humble wholesalers and suppliers on whom he has to rely to a significant degree, leading to a series of misfortunes that feel both unexpected but entirely deserving. Yet, this is a surface-level reading that doesn’t take into account the nuances that quietly and methodically unfurl as the film progresses. Kurosawa uses these ideas to examine the hubris of the younger generation, who believe their keyboards are not only the most powerful tool in which they can make their fortune, but also a weapon to be yielded against those of prior generations, who they seem to think are easily manipulated, which turns out not to be the case. It’s difficult to know whose side is more favoured, since both are viewed as arrogant and deranged, with both parties essentially doing what they can to take advantage of a flawed system, and discovering the sometimes unnerving consequences when these methods tend to backfire. Even then, this is still a very shallow reading of Cloud, a film that reveals its meaning most significantly in the form of its execution, which indicates most of the allure behind the story.

Tied directly to the film’s story is the unique structure, which is where Kurosawa finds most of the merit in this story, crafting a thoroughly engaging examination of the human condition through decidedly more unconventional means, most of which reflect a more sinister and disquieting view of society and how it functions. The foundation of the film is based around the idea of dismantling our understanding of seemingly ordinary subjects, which we discover is both the impetus for the plot itself, as well as the audience’s experience with the story, which points to some very unique ideas simmering beneath the surface of the film. Cloud is essentially divided into two distinct acts – the first is a slow-paced, methodical psychological drama in which we witness the protagonist gradually descend into a state of madness, fueled by his greed and ambition, which exist together in tandem, while the second is a fast-paced barrage of sounds and images that draw not only from the profoundly psychological aspects of the story, but also start to play in notes we usually find in horror, as well as being filled with action that makes the film almost impossible to define. When the entire last hour of your film is essentially an elongated shootout taking place in different locations throughout a working-class suburb, there is a lot of commentary to be derived, particularly about how the film handles the relationship between these people and their surroundings. It’s a masterful film that is driven primarily by its atmosphere – Kurosawa’s clean, almost overly clinical visual aesthetic lends the film a sense of disquiet, as if we are voyeurs into some private affairs, and gradually become complicit in the psychological destruction of this protagonist. It’s remarkably entertaining filmmaking that still manages to be outright terrifying, even when it is at its most impenetrable, with the foreboding tone and sense of unease being fundamental reasons behind its absolutely radical success at telling this particular story.

Cloud is not an easy film to disassemble and discuss, since there are several elements that feel as if they are emerging from a place that is entirely impossible to pinpoint, with much of the film being quite esoteric and ambiguous, even at its most simple. The one aspect that keeps it grounded is the lead performance, delivered on behalf of Masaki Suda, who has the unenviable task of leading the film and bringing the director’s deranged vision to life, which proved to be quite a difficult challenge considering how the role was not written to be particularly notable or coherent, and instead relied on the strengths of the actor tasked with playing the part to infuse it with meaning. Suda is steadily coming to be seen as one of Japan’s most acclaimed young actors, already being lauded with countless awards for his work over the years, and he possesses a chameleonic range in terms of both his physicality and style of performance (to the point where even I found myself only realizing it was him a few scenes into the film, since there are such radical differences in how he presents himself), and the entire film benefits from his full-throated commitment to playing this skittish, egocentric young man who lacks any logic or sense of decorum, which ultimately proves to be his downfall. Throughout the film, we follow the protagonist as he battles to be emancipated from his self-inflicted crisis, desperate to survive when being pursued by the very people he wronged to get to this point, a classic set-up that is perfectly encapsulated by the film’s madcap energy, and the actor’s thorough dedication to quite an ambiguous premise. The rest of the cast is also quite good, and serve the purpose of showing that no one can be entirely trusted (especially from a storytelling perspective), and that there are twists and turns that abound throughout, silently constituting this off-the-wall, deeply unnerving psychological horror about the more sinister side of humanity and its many unfortunate traits that prevent it from being particularly effective.

A tightly-wound, profoundly disturbing blend of psychological thriller and unhinged horror that is shrouded in layers of existential dread, Cloud is a staggering achievement and a film I imagine will only grow in estimation as time progresses and more people can witness its challenging, unconventional nuances. Undeniably, the film requires a lot of patience – it moves at a stately pace (and unlike Chime, which was a brisk sprint through the darker side of humanity that clocked in at well under an hour, Cloud makes use of every one of its 124 minutes), and does not always make its somewhat middling subject matter come across as being particularly notable, something that we discover was an intentional choice once the layers reveal themselves. It’s ultimately a brilliantly-inventive horror film that derives a reaction through tackling fragments of terror that are impossible to place – everything is slightly off-kilter and vaguely demented, and it all gradually evolves to becoming the artistic equivalent of that silent but guttural scream that emerges in the moments of the most unsettling existential confusion, the entire film plunging us in a state where we feel like we are lingering in that ambiguous space that we find ourselves in when waking up from the most realistic of nightmares. It’s incredibly audacious filmmaking (and the clean, precise style is also worth noting – there is not a single superfluous moment in this film, despite its length), and the final results are astonishing to say the least. Masterfully-crafted and made with an immense attention to both narrative and technical detail, Cloud is one of the year’s best genre films, and a work that will define the contemporary era in horror, especially with how he bases itself around the most visceral and emotionally scarring kind of terror imaginable, giving us an experience we are not likely to ever forget, for better or worse.