Yuta Shimotsu has become the latest breakout writer/director of Japanese horror after the arrival of his debut, Best Wishes For All dropped on Shudder this year. It’s awkward and strange tone immediately stands out in its uniquely unnerving way and it’s a style Shimotsu continues with his follow-up New Group. Again centring on a young female protagonist (Ai played by Anna Yamada), Shimotsu expands his scope beyond a single small town with a tale about a country-wide sensation of people forming human pyramids, which Ai is both appalled at and curious about as she tries to uncover why and how it is happening.
With this second feature, it becomes easier to identify Shimotsu’s style such as how he likes to start with an absurd or surreal premise as a way into delivering social commentary. New Group is even more direct in its satire than his debut, explicitly and unsubtly addressing how Japanese society is based around conformity. Even before the strange human pyramids begin to form, character’s behave according to routine, following orders that don’t even have to be verbalised, represented through the use of a P.E. teacher’s whistle as an audio cue for characters to fall in line to increasingly chilling effect.
Why the students suddenly become driven to form human pyramids is unexplained, though plenty of answers are offered up – either literal as a possible alien invasion or metaphorical as a representation of how people can become tools of oppression when forced to follow authoritarian regimes. Even the deaths at the hands of these mobilised students are a mystery, cartoonishly depicted through a shower of blood and no clear reason what actually happens to them.
Focusing the film’s themes through a young person’s self-development results in something like The Faculty if it was written by Junji Ito
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These outlandish scenes makes it seem like the film is aiming for teen horror, especially as New Group is set largely at a school. This setting reinforces the film’s themes by focusing on an institution designed to mould young people into the sort of people society wants them to be, reinforcing the status quo by any means necessary. This is where bullies get their first taste of blood and learn the power that can be held by threatening others to do what they tell them. These students being able to form themselves into literal weapons, impressively conveyed by the cast of students, thus emerges out of this learned behaviour. In contrast to this year’s Weapons which had a similar premise that it failed to examine with any meaningful depth, New Group establishes this metaphor through physical contortions in both ridiculous and unnerving ways as we watch crowds of students charging towards our protagonists, seemingly unstoppable and unwavering.
For all of the big ideas and increase in scale on display, Shimotsu maintains a sharp focus on the personal with the story gradually forming around Ai’s personal journey. He returns to the themes explored in Best Wishes For All on the pressures of familial expectations but this time contextualised within the wider social context of enforced conformity. Moments where we see Ai’s dreams highlights her anxieties as mass chanting of ‘Youth is invincible! Life is Easy!’ masks real harm being inflicted on individuals by those same masses. Her relationship with Yu (played by Yuzu Aoki), a new student who joins Ai’s class with an individualistic attitude, initially appears to be stereotypically romantic, but his constant berating of her for being a sheep shows how Ai encounters hostility from all sides – someone demanding you to be an individual can be just as oppressive and unconvincing as authoritarian orders to comply.
Focusing the film’s themes through a young person’s self-development results in something like The Faculty if it was written by Junji Ito. In playing broad with an extremely heightened tone, it lacks the scares that Best Wishes for All achieved with its specificity and by its conclusion, the film’s dedication to spectacle means the ideas get somewhat lost. Nonetheless, the film is unmistakably Shimotsu in having a fun and engaging take on relatable themes and if nothing else, it is hugely promising that he is taking such big swings so early on in his career. Seeing an artist taking risks is always more exciting than someone playing it safe, and I hope Shimotsu continues on the trajectory he has set up for himself.
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