Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud (2024) E-Commerce and the End of the World

Many modern Japanese directors don’t operate in the same way as their Western counterparts. When a Western director goes quiet for years, it’s often assumed they’re struggling to get funding or have fallen out of favour. In Japan, while funding can absolutely be an issue, the industry has pivoted in a unique way – many filmmakers also work as educators. So, when we finally get a new movie from one of our favourite Japanese directors, it’s often a result of them carving out time between mentoring the next generation.

Case in point: Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Since 2020’s Wife of a Spy, until 2024 he only directed a TV episode and a short film, largely because much of his time has been devoted to teaching at Tokyo University of the Arts. Then, in 2024, he returned with a bang – three new movies at once. His remake of A Serpent’s Path (1998) is still awaiting release, there’s the NTF horror Chime, and out this Friday via Blue Finch Films, Cloud.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a curious cat – you never quite know which version of the eclectic director you’re going to get. With Cloud, we’re seeing a side of him we haven’t glimpsed in a long time: the indie crime thriller, in the vein of A Serpent’s Path or Eyes of the Spider. But, as is always the case with Kurosawa (yes, I think he’s more than earned the right to be referred to by surname without confusion), there’s more going on beneath the surface. That layered complexity is why I love him so much. On the face of it, Cloud seems like a straightforward story about a scummy reseller climbing the ladder, only to be hunted down by those he screwed over along the way. But bubbling underneath is a critique that echoes the existential dread of his scariest work, Pulse (2001). He’s using this movie to satirise the darker sides of the contemporary internet age – particularly the cruelty of late-stage capitalism, with Masaki Suda’s “Ratel” depicting the digital world as a highway to hell.

One of the more divisive traits of Cloud is that its leading man is a quagmire of contradictions. The first half plays out like a standard rags-to-riches story, but we’re following a morally bankrupt individual who, when presented with the opportunity to do things the right way, consistently chooses the opposite. He lives in a warehouse full of cardboard boxes, and when he moves up in the world, he doesn’t upgrade to a nicer neighbourhood — he just relocates to a bigger warehouse, albeit one with a nicer kitchen.

He has a beautiful girlfriend, Akiko (played by Kotone Furukawa), who moves in with him — and he “hires” her as a live-in cook. Betrayal is a daily occurrence for him. He shows up at manga stores and buys out all the comics and figurines in bulk for cash, leaving the fans queuing outside (who knows for how long) empty-handed, just so he can sell them for profit. He doesn’t care if he’s ripping people off, or whether the goods he’s selling are real or fake – he’s a textbook capitalist, obsessed solely with maximising profit.

His complete lack of redeeming qualities is a feature not a bug. When things go south and he starts deflecting blame by stating “I’m not that bad,” it’s classic corporate gaslighting. Long story short: you’re meant to hate him. So, if you’re the type who believes a protagonist needs to be likeable, Cloud won’t be for you. To paraphrase Itto Ogami from Lone Wolf and Cub, Ratel is walking the demon’s path to Hell – only his journey isn’t peppered with rogue agents and assassins, but rather a slow slide into organised crime that recalls the metaphor of the frog being cooked in a gradually warming pan. Whether you call it a warming pan or a slow burn, this is classic Kurosawa: a steady escalation that leads to a horrific fate. It’s why I believe every one of his movies belongs to the horror genre – even the ones that seem furthest from it; even Tokyo Sonata.

Cloud ends with a subdued and moody shootout in an eerily quiet, abandoned warehouse. And, I won’t spoil it, but the final car ride will feel familiar to fans of Retribution or Cure. Calling Cloud a conceptual horror is one thing, but it also leans into visual and narrative territory usually reserved for the genre — from home invaders in masks (not a million miles away from the Strangers) to the chilling threat of Ratel’s face being melted with a flamethrower and broadcast on an internet livestream.

As a long-time fan of Japanese cinema, I have to shout out one casting choice: Yoshiyoshi Arakawa. His name might not register broadly, but he was a staple of quirky indie comedy-dramas like Survive Style 5+, Ping Pong, Kamikaze Girls, and Fukuchan of Fukufuku Flats. For those of us who remember the early Third Window Films catalogue, seeing him in a pitch-black role like this is quietly brilliant.

At the end of the day, Cloud is classic Kiyoshi Kurosawa — cold, composed, and quietly devastating. It’s a revenge story disguised as a crime thriller and rags-to-riches drama, but underneath, it’s a bleak portrait of digital alienation, social media lynch mobs, and the moral rot festering in the web’s unseen corners. Kurosawa doesn’t shout; he suffocates. And if you’re willing to sit with his trademark creeping dread, Cloud will leave a mark. Sure, it might not be as shattering as Chime, but few things are. This isn’t a cautionary tale about late-stage capitalism — it’s an autopsy.

Watch this alongside Pulse, and you might never log on again.

Rob’s Archive – Cloud (2024)