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New Religion, the new film by Keishi Kondo, is an audacious venture trying to merge the genres of horror, fantasy, and science fiction together. With eerie silence haunting the characters and nightmarish cinematography that would make David Lynch proud, the film emerges as a cryptic treatise on the degradation of society and the immense suffering that plagues the human condition.

The plot of the film revolves around Miyabi, who loses her daughter in a bizarre accident and subsequently gets divorced from her husband. Working as a call girl, she now lives with her boyfriend, who seems supportive and accepting of her past. Strange events arise when one of her fellow workers, Akari, gets in touch with a client who is obsessed with photography and is possibly rearing humans that are in a state of war against all social institutions. Let’s explore the characters of this uncanny film:

Spoilers Ahead...

Netflix has unveiled the first trailer for its latest live-action original series from Japan, Burn the House Down, set to launch globally on July 13.

A domestic revenge thriller, the show stars Mei Nagano (My Love Story!, Hanbun, Aoi) as Anzu Murata, a young woman whose childhood was torn apart when her family’s home burned down, prompting her parents to divorce. Convinced that her ailing mother was wrongly accused of the conflagration, Anzu goes undercover to work as a housekeeper for the suspicious woman who married her father in the wake of the blaze — convinced that she can gather evidence and discover the truth of what really happened.

The show is an adaptation of the popular manga Burn the House Down (Mitarai-ke Enjō Suru), which ran in Japan from 2017 to 2021. Kodansha USA Publishing began releasing the manga in English in June 2022.

‘Burn the House Down’

The lead cast includes: Asuka Kudo,...

Despite the fact that J-horror has been long since dead, particularly in the impact it had during the “Ringu” era, occasionally there are efforts that come out of the Japanese industry that do offer new approaches to the genre, with titles like “Bamy” and “Mimicry Freaks” being the first that come to mind. It is easy to say that Keishi Kondo’s feature debut falls under the same category.

New Religion screened at Warsaw Film Festival

That this film is going to be different is evident from the initial scene, when Miyabi, the protagonist of the movie, realizes that she has not paid attention to her young daughter Aoi for some time. Withοut any kind of drum rolls, both her and the audience realize that the kid has fallen of the balcony and is now dead, with Kondo moving almost immediately to some later time, where Miyabi is living in the same apartment,...