Review: Cloud

Director:  Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Stars:  Masaki Suda, Daiken Okudaira, Yoshiyoshi Arakawa

Back in 2001 Kiyoshi Kurosawa mused on the distancing effects of the internet in his prescient apocalyptic horror Pulse, which predicted the spread of isolationist ennui as a kind of ghostly epidemic. A quarter of a century and one pandemic later, here we are, addicted to our screens, psychologically predisposed to separation from one another, funnelling our emotions and anxieties into this digital ether. Kurosawa now returns to the subject in a roundabout way to reflect on how we’ve changed, and how the internet has become a new battleground where even predators can call themselves victims.

Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) is a reseller; a kind of 21st century Del Boy who buys up merchandise on the cheap only to sell it online at significant mark-up. He trades anonymously under the handle ‘Ratel’, an acknowledgement on some level of deceitful enterprise. Ryosuke works on instinct and intuition which often fails him. While his shady vocation has made him paranoid of even those closest to him, it hasn’t gotten him very far. Thanks to reckless decisions he’s often close to broke, presenting an aura of success that often has no basis.

The first half of Cloud is classic Kurosawa, leaning into Ryosuke’s increasing sense of dread that his digital footprint is catching up with him. Run-ins with old friends and ex-bosses come to feel like signifiers that the past is on his heels. Ryosuke absconds from Tokyo to a rural property with his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) and a recently hired assistant, Sano (Daiken Okudaira). But out in the sticks things seem only more threatening. In one eerily foreboding shot, a literal cloud falls over the house. A portent of fortunes to come. Cloud isn’t quite a horror, but Kurosawa uses his expertise in the genre to bend us to Ryosuke’s troubled state of mind in the slow-build first half.

If this sounds like the Kurosawa of old – filled with brooding menace and ill-defined threats – the second half of the picture challenges these expectations with abandon. While last year’s 45-minute chiller Chime may have hinted at a return to his roots as a horror filmmaker, Cloud ultimately proves more in-keeping with the director’s recent playful genre-hopping. As a motley crew of aggrieved customers assemble to find and take down ‘Ratel’, so Cloud transforms into a Coensesque comedy of ineptitude as this collective of keyboard warriors struggle to pin down their prey. Redolent of Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, the protracted finale (d)evolves(?) into a haphazard gun battle at a labyrinthine disused factory.

Kurosawa is as troubled by his angry mob as Ryosuke is. Early in the picture – before his world starts to crumble – the reseller scoffs at the victims of his scams, dismissing them as losers. Turns out they are losers, but this opportunity for vigilante justice has awoken something beyond the impotency of their online lives. Characters like the middle-aged shotgun-wielding Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) are willing to go all the way because visceral vengeance provides thrills that the drudgery of his alienated life cannot. The hunt for Ryosuke is treated like some kind of bizarre kamikaze away day. A rare social activity that allows these functionless men an opportunity to live out an action movie or video game fantasy.

Wryly, Ryusoke is ill-equipped for their onslaught. Panicked and defenseless, he relies on the support of his icily loyal assistant Sano, and remains aghast that his business ventures have inspired such ire. He’s unable to grasp that his scams are the straws that have broken several camels’ backs. There’s a heavy critique of a capitalist’s complacency in Cloud. Ryosuke’s bewildered response is tragicomic. There’s a sense that the world has changed all of these men and not one of them – except perhaps Sano – understand this. The lengthy shootout that follows may be bumbled by its characters but it is choreographed with technical excellence by it’s director.

As things become increasingly silly, so Cloud plays with ideas of genre. Once all the main characters are living out a real-life slice of pulp fiction, their behaviour starts to shift into the modes of the ‘movie’ they’re in. It’s as though the violent eruption has fundamentally altered reality and given permission for all the film’s characters to take on heightened personas; online avatars let loose in the real world. Fortunately for us, Kurosawa keeps the ensuing carnage away from populated areas. The factory arena is like an online deathmatch environment with seemingly no exit.

Sano’s importance in all this gradually escalates until his dogged support of Ryosuke starts to feel telling of some supernatural element, as elusive as the dark magic that powered Cure. Kurosawa fans of old might well cheer when one of his signature shots appears at the film’s climax, but it also teleports Cloud quickly into a more sinister and dreamlike realm. It’s the movie’s final evolution. Each one takes us further from ‘reality’, but each progresses Ryosuke, inevitably, toward damnation. This is as lurid and action-packed a Kurosawa feature as UK cinemas have ever seen, and the surprise of this is an abundant joy, even as the overall messaging and tone of Cloud is decidedly pessimistic. There are no connections anymore, just petty grievances and violent fantasies waiting for opportunities to manifest.