Kiyoshi Kurosawa already has “Serpent’s Path” ready to go in 2024, but it seems as though he’s already completed another film. Screen Daily reports Kurosawa just shot a new feature, “Chime”, which stars Mutsuo Yoshioka.
The synopsis states that the film tackles “a schoolteacher whose life is disrupted by a chime that brings with it an increasing sense of dread.” Kurosawa claims the film will start “a whole new genre,” adding that it “doesn’t fit into genres like horror or suspense. That’s the aim of this work: a crazy movie, a movie that’s out of this world.”
Japanese publication Nordot has some additional details on ”Chime,” via an interview with Kurosawa. It does sound like a return to the genre that made him famous, his last few films (“To the Ends of the Earth” and “Wife of A Spy”) steered away from thrills and horrir:
“I tried to tell the story of an ordinary middle-aged man who is woken by a chime and finds himself wandering between the everyday and the surreal. He is afraid. But he has faith. This absurdity is also a kind of freedom that allows him to slip out of the modern society that otherwise binds him through the crevices of its morals, justice, and conscience.”
One of the greats of contemporary Japanese filmmakers, Kurosawa is one of those rare filmmakers whose earlier works blended horror thriller and psychological depth. His reputation-making films include “Cure”, “Pulse”, and “Tokyo Sonata”.