The concept of a Japanese ghost story conjures up many spectacular images of hauntings from throughout cinema history. There are the vengeful spirits of classic films like 1968’s Kuroneko, and the formidable Ju-On series has built an empire around a single cursed family, even expanding to entries produced stateside with The Grudge. And if one desires a secluded domicile where all household appliances can come alive for the sole purpose of raising hell, one need to look no further than Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 psychedelic masterwork House. The most recent foray into this storied tradition is Never After Dark, the latest film from Utah filmmaker-turned-prominent voice in contemporary Japanese cinema, Dave Boyle (Man from Reno, House of Ninjas). With the aforementioned wealth of influence to choose from, Boyle’s reference points interestingly enough tend rather toward contemporary works like Ti West’s The House of the Devil (2009) and Damian McCarthy’s Oddity (2024), two incredibly slow-burn affairs that pit a solo, female protagonist in the unfamiliar confines of a sinister, labyrinthine mansion, where something evil and/or supernatural might be lurking around every corner. It’s a tried-and-true formula to be sure, but Boyle (who also scripts) lends enough of his own idiosyncrasy to this story of an individual who can see spirits and usher them into the afterlife to ensure that Never After Dark skews toward the genuinely memorable. It’s another deliberate feature, yes, but the payoff is worth the wait, handled with impressive confidence from Boyle.
The gifted — or damned, depending on how you want to look at it — individual in question is Airi (Moeka Hoshi, Shōgun) a traveling medium who helps guide spirits trapped on our mortal plane into the next realm where they belong. Describing her job as “lifting a veil” to escort spirits through to the other side, what seems like a potentially physically and emotionally draining line of work is actually something she takes in stride, finding herself more comfortable paling around with the dead than with the living. And that’s probably for the best, as Airi is frequently visited by the spirit of her older sister Miku (Kurumi Inagaki), who died many years prior and still has the appearance of her teenage years. Miku only pops up in reflections, offering guidance and encouragement to Airi while on the job, which includes her latest ghostbusting gig taking place at a gorgeous estate isolated from much of civilization. The place is owned by Teiko (Tae Kimura), who has hired to Airi to exorcise a particularly nefarious ghoul who has been making the mansion go bump in the night. Teiko has all the faith in Airi’s method, but her son Gunji (Kento Kaku) is more dubious about her presence, even warning Airi that they’ve inventoried all of their possessions before inviting her into their home. Left alone in the house (one of the stipulations is that the homeowners cannot participate in the lifting of the veil), Airi quickly makes the acquaintance of the trapped spirit, an intimidating figure that appears to have had his jaw blown clean off of his face, credited as “The Gaping Mouth Man” (Mutsuo Yoshioka, the lead of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s supremely creepy Chime). As Airi settles into her routine, it’s evident that The Gaping Mouth Man has no desire to leave without a fight, and Airi soon realizes she might be in for more than she bargained for, with more threats soon descending upon the house.
As if to goose audience expectations, the very first image of Never After Dark is that of a bloody axe, discarded on the floor in the middle of the gargantuan home. Of course, nothing outwardly violent will occur for the next 75 minutes, with Boyle instead opting to settle his film into the rhythms of Airi’s work. In fact, the director actually makes Never After Dark something of a hangout film for its first two acts, the camera hanging out with Airi and the occasional appearance of her sister, with the former making frequent trips to the afterlife with her own specialized ceremony of lighting a candle, burning some of her hair, and staring into a zoetrope-style device in order to spiritually disassociate from her body and walk amongst the ghosts. These sequences offer some of the film’s best moments, and Boyle sells them with an exquisitely chilling atmosphere. When she’s not exploring the other side of the veil, Airi is content to lounge about Teiko’s enormous, secluded home, indulging in food, drink, and plenty of vinyl records. There’s also the business of The Gaping Mouth Man scuttling around the film’s edges during this prolonged stretch, though he doesn’t present an immediate threat and spends most of his time furiously scratching at a cabinet door, perhaps trapped due to his connection to a physical object. He’s a tough nut to crack in terms of the film’s trajectory for a while, offering a bit of a supernatural mystery element to the picture as Airi is forced to play detective to learn what makes this spirit tick in order to effectively expunge him from the premises. Trouble is, she might not like the answer.
Further detail of where Never After Dark ultimately goes would dip heavily into spoiler territory, as Boyle’s film is the kind that handles its unfurlings with care and rewards patient viewers. We won’t dig into the ending here, but suffice to say that Boyle is in full control of the film’s arc, constructing the slowest of burns and keeping things moving at a nearly glacial pace, before suddenly dialing things all the way to eleven for the final 30 minutes. That’s not to say the film’s build-up is mere thumb-twiddling; Boyle maintains terrific formal control of his subjects — expressive in its own right, and necessary to pull off its upshift — and Hoshi makes for an extremely appealing lead, quietly commanding and sensitive to the needs of her clients. As these things go, the crawl of the film’s pre-climax will leave some impatient viewers scrambling for the eject button, but Never After Dark‘s bloody, brutal payoff is a classic and effective case of worth-the-wait.
DIRECTOR: Dave Boyle; CAST: Moeka Hoshi, Kento Kaku, Kurumi Inagaki, Mutsuo Yoshioka, Bokuzô Masana; DISTRIBUTOR: Magnolia Pictures; IN THEATERS: September 25; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 44 min.
Comments are closed.