February 15, 2025

FILMHOUNDS Magazine

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The Best Type Of Uncomfortable Hilarity – Cloud (Fantastic Fest 2024)

Masaki Suda as Ryosuke Yoshii in Cloud pointing a gun at the camera

2024 is shaping up to be a killer year for , with the Japanese auteur following his 45-minute existential horror Chime and prefacing his French-language remake of Serpent's Path with Cloud, a pitch-black comedy of errors for the overconsumption age.

In Cloud, Masaki Suda plays Ryosuke Yoshii, a factory worker and grifting online reseller using the pseudonym “Ratel” to claw his way to the top on a path of knockoff handbags and the broken backs of those he's conned. When one sale goes particularly well, Yoshii decides to pack in any semblance of normal life and commit full-time to the art of the deal. His decision to go solo comes as a shock to both his boss at the factory Mr Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa), and fellow reseller Muroaka (Masataka Kubota), who is hoping to go in on a new venture that, predictably, promises to be the most lucrative yet. With his naïve yet lovable girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) and new assistant Sano (Daiken Okudaira) at his side, Yoshii leaves behind his cramped Tokyo apartment for a more spacious place in the hills, excited to be able to scam and swindle his way to the top in secrecy – or so he thinks.

While Kurosawa is often rightfully praised as a director able to effortlessly imbibe even his non-horror offerings with a sense of deep anxiety and existential dread, many viewers often neglect to realize how funny his work can be. Cloud is a perfect example of the best type of uncomfortable hilarity; one that leaves you stifling giggles and nervously glancing at those around you to see if you're ‘allowed' to laugh. As boss Takimoto, Arakawa especially is the heart of plenty of these moments, providing a hilarious dissection of Japanese working culture and social hierarchy.

It's not all fun and games though, as Kurosawa's trademark mastery of sound and space manifests in some truly stomach-dropping shocks housed in his signature settings of labyrinthine warehouses and glass cages. These exposed spaces are a testament to the voyeuristic nature of the internet and, much like in his horror magnum opus Pulse, Kurosawa seems to be firmly of the belief that providing an online space for obsessive loners to congregate in anonymity is probably the worst thing to happen to humankind – only this time, it's far less spectral.

For those familiar with Kurosawa's gargantuan filmography, Cloud doesn't feel like a huge departure from the director's usual thematic fare and stylistic flare, and the climactic showdown of bloodshed and bullets probably comes too late in the slow burn two-hour runtime to convert any non-believers. But with Cloud selected as Japan's entry for Best International Feature at next year's Academy Awards, the film will undoubtedly find its audience faster than much of his oeuvre – and if you've ever taken an online comment a little too personally or realized far too late that a Temu purchase is not what it seems, Cloud will have you howling with laughter while you desperately delete your digital footprint.

Cloud has its US premiere at Fantastic Fest 2024 on Thursday, September 19