When dead people starts returning to the small Japanese town of Aso, government official Kawada is dispatched to uncover the “truth”.
Direction
Shiota's restraint makes the impossible feel devastatingly ordinary.
Acting
Yuko Takeuchi's fragile, fierce performance anchors the emotional chaos.
Director
Akihiko Shiota
Tsuyoshi Kusanagi
Heita Kawada
Yuko Takeuchi
Aoi Tachibana
Yūsuke Iseya
Shunsuke
Show Aikawa
Shuhei
Yuriko Ishida
Reiko
Keiichi Yamamoto
Hideya Nakajima
Misaki Itō
Sachiko Saito
Akiko Oshidari
Sonoko Saito
Kunie Tanaka
Dr. Saito
Ko Shibasaki
Rui
Masami Nagasawa
Naomi Morishita
Hayato Ichihara
Katsunori Yamada
Katsuyuki Murai
Saku
Tanie Kitabayashi
Saki Naito
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shiota adapted this from his own novel, part of Japan's 1990s 'returning dead' subgenre that reflected collective anxieties about unresolved national trauma and the limits of ritual mourning.
The film's muted supernatural elements deliberately echo Kiyoshi Kurosawa's style—Shiota studied under him and reportedly shot several scenes as deliberate homages.
JP
