Nikkatsu Corporation
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cloud,” the director’s third film of 2024 and another hit, is a sharp, unsettling dive into the dark underbelly of modern capitalism and digital-age alienation. Celebrated for his works in which he blends psychological horror and social commentary, Kurosawa once again demonstrates why he remains one of the sharpest cinematic analyzers of contemporary society. At 69, he continues to deliver films that dissect the toxicities of the digital age, the influence of capitalism, and the unsettlingly violent impacts of hyper-individualism. In Cloud, Kurosawa presents a world where ethics are blurred, greed is rampant, and the online world becomes a real-life battlefield of hate.
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Year: 2024
Country: Japan
Original Title: クラウド)
Runtime: 124 minutes
The film introduces the viewer to Yoshii (Masaki Sudaa), a young and unprincipled reseller who sees opportunity in every situation. The story begins with Yoshii visiting an elderly man, Tonoyama (Masaaki Akahori), to negotiate a deal for a batch of therapy machines sitting idly in his garage. Yoshii persuades Tonoyama to sell the machines for just 90,000 yen, far below their actual worth, with a clever suggestion that junk removal would be more costly. Unbeknownst to Tonoyama, Yoshii will soon resell the machines for over four times what he paid.
Yoshii’s life is a chilling juxtaposition of the banal and the sinister. By day, he works at a clothing factory, where his boss (Me Takimoto) tries to convince him to take on a leadership role. But Yoshii is uninterested in a conventional career path; he is fixated on his reselling business, where he deals in both legitimate and counterfeit goods. Using the online alias “ratel” to hide his identity. Yoshii embraces a cutthroat mentality, believing that it doesn’t matter if the bags he sells are fake as long as they sell quickly. This mindset captures the essence of his character: a young man completely untethered from morality, driven solely by profit.
Kurosawa builds tension throughout Cloud with his signature style, using sudden shifts in lighting, rapid camera pans, and eerie sound design to craft an atmosphere of mounting dread. In one particularly haunting scene, where Yoshii is seated in a bus, the sound abruptly mutes, and the camera pans to a shadow lurking ominously. Moments like this suggest that something sinister is looming, creating a sense of paranoia that creeps up and begins to suffocate both Yoshii and the audience.
As Yoshii becomes increasingly isolated, he quits his job, resulting in his boss being overwhelmed with embarrassment, and decides to move to a home with more storage for his business, under the guise of providing his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) with the lifestyle she desires. His actions become more reckless, leading to a series of conflicts with competitors, law enforcement, and customers enraged by his fraudulent sales. Yoshii’s relationship with Akiko initially offers a brief respite from his relentless pursuit of money. However, their connection soon weakens under the weight of his obsession (and perhaps her own materialism). Finally. his former mentor, Muraoka (Masataka Kubota), tries to reconnect, but Yoshii’s apathy and obsession have grown too deep, pushing him further into a web of his own making where the dropshipper becomes increasingly notorious.
The final act of Cloud moves the film into a disturbing, surreal space. What begins as a psychological thriller transforms into a game-like survival scenario, where shockingly emotionless shootouts unfold with a chilling detachment that mirrors the virtual vendettas and hate wars taking place online. As a revenge group from the dark web closes in on Yoshii, now fully exposed as “ratel,” the violence becomes mechanical, stripped of human emotion, and disturbingly reflective of our current digital age’s anonymity and vitriol.
Kurosawa’s depiction of these scenes, aside from being thrilling, is deeply thought-provoking, suggesting that the digital sphere’s impersonal hostility has leaked into real life, transforming human interactions into transactions of anger and retribution. Despite his age, Kurosawa remains unparalleled in his ability to capture the essence of modern times, offering a significant critique of social media’s toxicity and the dehumanizing effects of a capitalist society.
“Cloud” premiered at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival, where it screened out of competition.
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