There’s a special kind of horror that doesn’t scream or slash—it creeps up on you in the form of unchecked ambition, of algorithms, of the unshakable feeling that someone’s always watching. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud (クラウド) is soaked in that kind of dread. And the scariest part? It doesn’t need ghosts. Just Wi-Fi.
The film follows Ryosuke (Masaki Suda), a guy stuck in the kind of job that drains your soul in tiny, daily doses—working at a laundry facility where the only thing more monotonous than the work is the silence. So when he gets the chance to make a little more money through online reselling, it feels like an escape hatch. First, it’s just a few items flipped for a profit. Then, it's a side hustle. Then, it’s his whole life.
This isn’t your typical rags-to-riches story, though. As Ryosuke climbs higher, what he’s really doing is digging a hole. He moves with his girlfriend Akiko (played wonderfully by Kotone Furukawa) to a sleek, minimal home outside Tokyo that looks like it was built by an AI interior designer obsessed with concrete and emptiness. The new house is supposed to symbolize their upward mobility—but it quickly starts to feel like a sterile trap. Packages pile up. Strangers show up. The walls feel too thin.
To handle the growing workload, Ryosuke hires a quiet, somewhat off-kilter assistant named Sano (Daiken Okudaira), and this is where things really start to shift. There’s something not quite right about Sano, but Kurosawa doesn’t play it too obvious. The real tension is in the atmosphere. Doors creak, the camera lingers, and you’re constantly waiting for something to snap.
And when it finally does, it snaps. Cloud turns on a dime from unsettling domestic quiet to full-on action thriller—and I mean that in the best way. Kurosawa knows how to take a slow-burn and make it worth the wait. There’s something deeply satisfying about the way all of Ryosuke’s choices come back to bite him, not in an abstract karmic way, but in the very real form of the people he’s screwed over. You can only hide behind a screen for so long before someone kicks the door down.
One of the film’s sharpest edges is its dark humor. This is Kurosawa having a little fun, and you can feel it. It’s not ha-ha funny—it’s more like oh god I shouldn’t be laughing but here we are funny. Watching Ryosuke obsess over bids and click-through rates like it’s life or death (which, increasingly, it is), there's a satire here that cuts deep. If you’ve ever gotten high off the dopamine hit of a shipped order or stayed up refreshing your eBay page, Cloud might feel a little too real.
Masaki Suda is pitch-perfect as Ryosuke. There’s a cold stillness to his performance that makes the moments of panic hit harder. He’s not a villain, not exactly. But he is selfish, delusional, and dangerously tunnel-visioned. You get the sense he never really wanted power—just control. And watching that illusion fall apart is both satisfying and kind of tragic. Suda plays him not as evil, but as exhausted, and there’s something very modern about that. We’ve all seen people lose themselves to “the hustle.” Some of us have been those people.
The set design deserves its own applause. The house Ryosuke moves into becomes a character of its own—cold, gray, impersonal. There’s nothing cozy or lived-in about it. Even the kitchen looks like it was pulled from a shipping center. You feel how little space is left for anything human. That’s not an accident. This is a film that knows the grind culture aesthetic: minimalist, productivity-focused, and emotionally vacant.
Kurosawa’s direction is sharp as ever. He keeps things visually simple but tonally complex. The pacing may test some viewers early on—yes, it’s slow—but it’s a slow that simmers, not one that drags. And when the tension finally boils over, it’s done with the kind of chaotic energy that feels both earned and inevitable. You may not see every twist coming, but once they land, they make perfect sense.
If there’s a message in Cloud, it’s less a moral and more a mirror. We’re all a little bit Ryosuke—desperate for something more, blindly chasing convenience and profit, believing we’re exempt from consequences as long as we stay online. But the reckoning always arrives. Sometimes as a knock at the door. Sometimes as a glitch in the system.
Cloud isn’t Kurosawa’s scariest film, but it might be his most timely. It takes the bland, everyday rituals of digital life and turns them into something surreal and suspenseful. And while the climax veers into action, it never loses its emotional center. This is a story about choices, about denial, and about the cost of being disconnected from the people around you—until it’s too late to fix it.
Final verdict? Cloud is an unnerving, genre-blurring ride that blends satire, suspense, and just enough chaos to keep you guessing. If you’re burned out by capitalism, scared of your inbox, or just in the mood for something that feels weirdly close to home, this one’s for you.
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Cast: Masaki Suda, Kotone Furukawa, Daiken Okudaira
Writer: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Cinematography: Yasuyuki Sasaki
Music: Takuma Watanabe
Cloud screens at the Melbourne International Film Festival on 17 & 21 August 2025. Tickets are available via MIFF.com.au.
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