Anyone can be preyed upon... A suspenseful thriller exposing terrors lurking within our modern society, in which hidden malice runs wild.
Renowned master filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa has received numerous international accolades, including the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard Award for Best Director for “Journey to the Shore” (2015), the Venice International Film Festival’s Silver Lion (Best Director Award) for “Wife of a Spy” (2020), and the title of Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Government in June of 2024. Now he unveils this stylish and brutal original film, in development since 2018.
Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) works at a small factory and makes money on the side as a reseller operating under the pseudonym “Ratel.” He deals in medical devices, handbags, figurines... Anything he can flip to make a profit. Buy low, sell high – that’s all there is to it. Muraoka (Masataka Kubota), a senior classmate from Yoshii’s technical college days who taught him the ins and outs of reselling, approaches him with a potentially high-earning proposal, but he shuns it and devotes himself to his own dubious deeds. For Yoshii, his growing bank balance is the only thing he can trust. When Yoshii is offered a promotion to a managerial position by his employer at the factory, Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa), he steadfastly refuses, calling time on his three-year stint, and resigns on the spot. He rents a lakeside house outside the city for both residential and business purposes, and starts a new life with his girlfriend, Akiko (Kotone Furukawa). With the help of Sano (Daiken Okudaira), a local youth hired as a helper, Yoshii’s reselling schemes appear to be going from strength to strength until unsettling incidents begin occurring consecutively around him. Suspicious vehicles roaming his vicinity, a broken window, stalking shadows, and online malice... A negative spiral of animosity gathers momentum, eventually taking physical form and transforming into a crazed mob of unknown number. Their target is Yoshii, whose oblivious existence is rapidly torn apart...