Writer and Director: Yuto Shimizu
Make no mistake, this is a dangerous film. Hopefully, it won’t become a cult classic for the wrong reasons. Tokyo Nightfall, showing at this year’s well-curated Raindance Film Festival, is a treatise on suicide. Although set in Japan, its examination of aimlessness amidst a capitalistic city could apply to anywhere in the Western world. It’s a tough watch; an all-too-real urban horror.
Amenashi blames himself for his sister’s suicide. After witnessing a girl falling to the ground out of an apartment window when she herself was a girl, Anna has always been troubled by sadness. She craves the company of Amenashi and his two friends, Hattori and Nozu, but she also keeps them at a distance. She films them with a cine camera, asking them questions like “What’s your saddest memory? What’s your happiest memory?” Nozu tells her to switch off the camera. “It’s like a suicide note’, he says.
Their lives are simple yet unfulfilling. A perpetual lighting of cigarettes and clubs. Amenashi works as a delivery cyclist bringing ‘seaside burgers’ to the homes of ungrateful customers. When he meets up with Hattori and Nozu one night, he tells them he’s quit his job and that he can’t go clubbing with them as he’s going to a special invitation-only party.
Hattori suspects that Amenashi is planning to attend the event he’s heard rumours about online; some place where people put an end to their suffering together: a suicide club. Hattori and Nozu make their way there, too. When they arrive, they find themselves at a rave where the drinks are free and the music pulses.
Interspersed throughout the film are flashbacks of the home movies. At first, they seem a little repetitive, showing us the same footage we’ve previously seen. But cleverly, they start or end at a different point, giving us a little more information, a little more backstory to these four people’s fragile lives. The repetitions act like elegies, their tomfoolery in front of the camera making them seem ghostly, already gone.
The four main actors give authentic performances. Iori Abe is the tortured Amensahi, finding no escape from his grief. Utano Aoi is the melancholic Anna, haunted by the body she saw on the ground. Taiga Hironaka is the protective Hattori, while Kosuke Tanaka puts in a great turn as the happy-go-lucky Nozu.
Of course, you could view the film as a straightforward horror, but it would be a mistake. Tokyo Nightfall, directed and written by Yuto Shimizu, is an examination of youth malaise in an apathetic world. The final shot, another flashback, shows the capital in razor-sharp detail from above. Its loneliness chills.
Tokyo Nightfall is screening at the Raindance Film Festival 2026 from 17-26 June.
