{"id":576899,"date":"2026-04-11T00:07:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T00:07:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/576899\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T00:07:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T00:07:16","slug":"the-japanese-horror-that-will-only-ever-play-theaters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/576899\/","title":{"rendered":"The Japanese horror that will only ever play theaters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many moviegoers have gotten used to waiting for films to hit streaming services, but in the case of Kiyoshi Kurosawa<\/a>\u2018s new chilling release, Chime, they might be out of luck. The film is currently enjoying a theatrical release alongside the new 4K restoration of Kurosawa\u2019s Serpent\u2019s Path and, at the moment, there are no plans to digitally or physically release the new movie outside of the theatrical space. Although the film originally premiered on a Japanese NFT site<\/a>, its ironic move to the real world is an impactful one. In an age where streaming services have deflated box office numbers, this theatrical-only distribution is a strike back against shrinking release windows<\/a> which have collapsed in the wake of the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n

Not that Chime is your typical theatrical release in the first place. At an economical 45 minutes, Chime is both a succinct introduction to Kurosawa\u2019s style and a quiet horror film in its own right that methodically builds dread with just about every scene. Chime follows a cooking instructor named Matsuoka (Mutsuo Yoshioka) who aspires to leave teaching behind to become a chef at a restaurant. In the middle of a busy class, one student, Tashiro (Seiichi Kohinata), stands out\u2014but not in a good way. He\u2019s standing apart from his classmates, rebuffs Matsuoka\u2019s feedback, and tells his teacher about the chime he hears but no one else can. After Tashiro kills himself in class, Matsuoka is left shaken, and the fabric of his life begins coming apart. People around him start acting uncontrollably, until finally he does as well. Perhaps he\u2019s hearing the chime now.<\/p>\n

Chime shares many stylistic connections with Kurosawa\u2019s earlier films, like the concept of a social psychosis that\u2019s spread like a virus, a muted color palette, sound design that enhances the viewer\u2019s sense of foreboding, and restrained performances that unravel over the course of the film\u2019s many twists and turns. For decades, the director has thrilled audiences with his unique approach to horror movies, pensive dramas, and suspenseful films including recent hits like Before We Vanish, To The Ends Of The Earth, and Cloud. After breaking out with his 1997 psychological murder-mystery Cure, he tapped into a kind of suspenseful horror that doesn\u2019t feel over-the-top or excessive yet still capable of shock and violence. He utilizes subtle hints that things are amiss, like changing an actor\u2019s body language or dropping out the audio, disrupting the routine of daily life to unleash the violence that lives underneath the surface of an ordered, busy world.<\/p>\n

Chime\u2018s companion feature, Kurosawa\u2019s 1998 film Serpent\u2019s Path showcases the director\u2019s foray into other genres, this time a violent yakuza revenge story. In 2024, he remade Serpent\u2019s Path in French, but the new restoration of the original Japanese version brings audiences back to seedy warehouses, grim interrogation scenes, desperate pleas for forgiveness, and one haunted soul out for revenge. It\u2019s utterly grimy compared to the sleekness of Chime, which isn\u2019t about a world of violence but about how violence can seep into everyday life\u2014fitting for a film that will, as Janus Films has announced, only ever play for live audiences in the theater.<\/p>\n

Returning a horror movie to the communal experience of the big screen gives it fresh blood, and it\u2019s certainly a very different way of appreciating the work than in its NFT origins. You won\u2019t have long to enjoy this double bill of Kurosawa\u2019s work, and in the case of Chime, it\u2019s the only way to catch Kurosawa return to the kind of psychological thriller storytelling that introduced his films to the larger world.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many moviegoers have gotten used to waiting for films to hit streaming services, but in the case of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":["post-576899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}