Almost everyone has been scammed on the Internet – it’s a rite of passage at this point, to inflict grief on a faceless person through a screen. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud Asks who the person on the other side of the screen is and turns out it’s just a guy named Yoshii living in a cramped apartment hoarding everything from knockoff designer handbags to anime figurines encased in glass.
Yoshi does not consider himself a fraud. Rather, he is a reseller of desirable goods, mostly so he can make enough money to do as little as possible. He works part-time, but when his boss wants to promote him to manager, he refuses. Then, when wildly threatening things start happening, he decides to pack up his operation and move to the woods with his girlfriend. Unfortunately, the reach of the Internet is inescapable.
Cloud lulls you into a false sense of security
When things go haywire, it becomes a no-holds-barred thriller
Yohsii’s life is pretty mundane – between selling goods on the internet under the username Ratel, he doesn’t really do much. His business is a form of gambling with a little extortion sprinkled in, but he takes pride in his work, staging photos for products he sells and hiring an assistant to ensure his business runs smoothly.
Kurosawa wants us to be absorbed in Yoshi’s rote lifestyle, just so he can shatter it at the right moment. It recalls his other 2024 movie, ChimeWhere objective horror interrupts ordinary moments. There are elements of it, like when the film goes silent, when an unidentified figure passes Yoshi on the bus, where it is indicated that he overheard Yoshi’s conversation, or when he is almost caught by a trace wire during the Ride on his motorbike.
It would be disturbing if it weren’t so extraordinary, the way the internet and social media make their way into our everyday lives.
The director even manages to squeeze in a highly effective jump scare before things really go off the rails, as if Kurosawa was saying that our everyday lives could be breached by insidious outside forces at any moment. If that sounds too serious, it’s not. Cloud Balances a good tone, moves between comedy and drama, before he completely indulges in the absurd.
When Yoshii’s online identity is compromised, his misdeeds and petty behaviors catch up to him and the aggravated parties in question start popping into his life in surprising ways. It would be disturbing if it were not so extraordinary, as the Internet and social media make their way into our everyday lives.
However, it’s not just the internet. This is the way the constant screen time has trained Yoshii to be antisocial, unaware of the brash nature that rubs so many people in his life the wrong way. Does Yoshi deserve to be in the middle of a fight for his life because of this? Not necessarily. But that it happens at all is deeply strange.
Masaki Suda is perfectly confused as he faces relentless violence, while Daiken Okudaira as his assistant Sano is a calming presence in the otherwise chaotic back half of Cloud. Kurosawa leaves much to the imagination when it comes to the machinations behind the events, only heightening the illogical nature of it all.
The action is not elegant. It is irritable and loud and ugly. When Yoshi, Sano, and all those with whom Yoshi has crossed paths on the Internet and in real life come together, it’s a symphony of chaos. It’s a damn good time, too, even if Kurosawa leaves us with the haunting idea that we all are too Connected, just one gives away from finding opportunity or something much more dangerous.
Cloud Premiere at the Venice Film Festival and screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The film is 123 minutes long and has not yet been rated.
A young man struggling to make ends meet through online reselling finds himself targeted by an evil figure.