{"id":432916,"date":"2026-05-18T05:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T05:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/432916\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T05:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T05:28:11","slug":"sheep-in-the-box-review-kore-edas-sweet-but-limp-sci-fi-fable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/432916\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Sheep in the Box’ Review: Kore-eda’s Sweet but Limp Sci-Fi Fable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda<\/a> is not a filmmaker anyone would accuse of being Hollywood-adjacent. But his new movie, \u201cSheep in the Box<\/a>,\u201d takes off from an idea that sounds like pure high-concept Hollywood \u2014 or, in fact, several versions of that movie at once, all of them bad. It\u2019s the story of an architect, Otone (played by the weirdly Sandra Dee-like Haruka Ayase), and her runty carpenter husband, Kensuke (Daigo), whose 7-year-old mop-haired son, Kakeru (Rimu Kuwaki), died two years ago in an accident. They\u2019ve been suffering ever since, but then they\u2019re approached by a company called REbirth that specializes in building generative AI humanoid replicas of lost loved ones. Before long, the couple welcomes into its home a replicant version of Kakeru, who looks and talks just like him. Problem solved! Or, in fact, problems just starting.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou can instantly envision a blockbuster American version of this story. And though \u201cSheep in the Box\u201d is a sweetly wan sci-fi parable that mostly just sits there, I could see a smart producer ripping off the concept anyway. Here are a few of the ways it might go: The new robot kid is so winsome and appealing that he\u2019s like a \u201cperfect\u201d version of the boy they lost \u2014 which pleases the couple greatly, until they realize that no, he really isn\u2019t their son, and no one ever could be. Or\u2026the robot kid possesses a remarkable intelligence that comes off as a bit sinister, and from the start he seems to be missing a certain emotional je ne sais quoi. Or\u2026it could all veer off into a strange subplot about an older boy who gathers local youngsters into a woodland \u201cChildren of the Damned\u201d cult, which the robot Kakeru joins.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt different points, \u201cSheep in the Box\u201d is all those movies (and maybe a few more). Yet Kore-eda\u2019s attitude toward what he\u2019s showing us is so lackluster and noncommittal that it\u2019s hard to know how to react to any of it. I\u2019ve never been a big fan of this director, but his previous movie, \u201cMonster,\u201d which also premiered at Cannes (\u201cSheep in the Box\u201d is his eighth feature to do so), was a time-bending saga of childhood friendship and trauma in which every scene cut sharply. \u201cSheep in the Box,\u201d by contrast, feels gauzy and thrown together. For all the fantasy simplicity of the premise, there\u2019s almost no structure to it, and though the humanoid Kakeru increases in agency and brains as the movie goes on, it still never figures out who he is. In the best AI and android movies, from \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey\u201d to
\u201cBlade Runner\u201d to Kokonada\u2019s \u201cAfter Yang,\u201d a human machine\u2019s identity has to toy with the audience.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSheep in the Box\u201d starts off like a piece of gentle futuristic sci-fi, as Otone receives an everyday delivery package via drone. There\u2019s some token humor, as when Kensuke compares the new Kakeru to a Roomba, which becomes a running joke. And when the boy reveals that he can reel off the names of all the local train stops, we\u2019re supposed to be as dazzled as Otone is. (We\u2019re not.) Part of the problem is that Otone, whose maternal feelings are the heart of the story, is a strangely one-note character. There\u2019s a subplot about how she\u2019s struggling to design a geometric home for a family that has hired her, and while her analog house models are lovely, it remains unclear what the hold-up is.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn movies, few things age faster than a technology parable, be it \u201cThe Stepford Wives\u201d or a \u201990s Internet thriller like \u201cThe Net.\u201d The AI movies that will undoubtedly soon be upon us are likely to have a short half-life. But in the case of \u201cSheep in the Box,\u201d the film\u2019s perceptions already feel musty and behind the curve; it\u2019s like the thinnest of satires played weirdly straight. The title comes from \u201cThe Little Prince,\u201d a book Kakeru reads, and from what I can gather the notion of a sheep in the box refers to that thing we call a soul. Does the humanoid Kekaru have one? The movie also references this idea by having Kakeru establish a relationship with trees, which are plants that are said to have souls. The \u201cCan machines think?\u201d paradigm \u2014 or, more to the point, \u201cCan machines feel?\u201d \u2014 is destined to be central to the new wave of tech fairy tales. The trouble with \u201cSheep in the Box\u201d is that it never makes up its mind about this question, perhaps because Kore-eda wants to have it both ways: to portray Kakeru as an adorable moppet and a cautionary icon of the cold future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda is not a filmmaker anyone would accuse of being Hollywood-adjacent. But his new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[14400,156,82537,409,111,139,69,220665],"class_list":["post-432916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-hirokazu-kore-eda","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sheep-in-the-box"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}