⭐️⭐️1/2 out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Intensity:🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
From producer and Japanese horror stalwart, Takashi Shimizu, comes a meandering social-horror tale of a young woman returning to visit her small hometown only to discover that life there was never as rosy as it seemed.
Directed by Yûta Shimotsu
Director and co-writer Shimotsu (sharing writing credits with Rumi Kakuta) brings Japan’s aging population and the stagnation of the Japanese small town into the spotlight with Best Regards To All. A young woman [Kotone Furukawa; Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021)] who, like so many others her age, has moved away from her sleepy small town for the promise of education and work in the big city, reluctantly returns to visit her aging grandparents. And while at first everything seems to be as it should be, she starts to realize there’s something not quite right about grandma & grandpa.
With a national birth rate that’s been too low to sustain a stable population for decades, Japan is facing some serious social issues and director Shimotsu deftly hauls a few of them out of the shadows to put them on display. What happens when all the good jobs are in the big cities? Who takes care of the elderly when retirees outnumber the active workforce?
How do you keep people happy?
Best Regards To All (which was based on the director’s award winning short film, Happiness For All) quietly moves along at its own, steady pace. This is not a film for those needing explosions, splatter, and mayhem; it’s a contemplative experience where an undercurrent of futility runs thick.
As the lead actor, Kotone Furukawa is an absolute pleasure to watch. Her innocence and naïveté are juxtaposed perfectly with the reality that’s finally being revealed to her. She plays her character’s arc to a T and steals every scene that she’s in.
With a supervising producer like Takashi Shimizu on board, production quality is top shelf. The movie looks and sounds great. Special effects are few and far between and tend to look more like stage effects than horror movie gore, but it still seems to work for the most part.
While some, like myself, may find Best Regards To All a little on the slow side, there’s no doubting the talent behind the film. This is definitely one that will stick with you long after the credits roll.
Best Regards To All recently had its Korean premiere at South Korea’s Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN) and is currently making the rounds on the genre festival circuit.
Review by Robert Zilbauer.