ニューレリジョン 「Nyu- Rerijon」
Release Date: 2023
Duration: 100 mins.
Director: Keishi Kondo
Writer: Keishi Kondo (Screenplay),
Starring: Kaho Seto (Miyabi), Satoshi Oka (Photographer), Ryuseigun Saionji (Boyfriend), Daiki Nunami,
J-horror is effectively like a Frankenstein’s monster these days. When major studios resurrect a character like Ringu‘s Sadako or Ju-on‘s Kayako, there is the recycling of a patchwork of scares and tropes grafted on to gimmick storylines. Original works by horror masters like Takashi Shimizu find their scares toned down to be more acceptable to the mainstream and so, without the power to shock or even surprise, these films have the freshness of a desiccated corpse. Viewing them is like passively watching a corpse shamble on and off the screen. Then, out of nowhere, Keishi Kondo’s New Religion emerged on the festival circuit, like a breath of fresh air gusting into the genre crypt.
A truly independent film, Kondo made it in between fulltime work commitments and a crowdfunding campaign to help with post-production. What we get is a horror movie that feels close to the supernatural apocalypse films that Kiyoshi Kurosawa put out in the late 90s/early 2000s but it is wrapped up in an affecting portrait of the main character’s inchoate grief warping reality.
When we first meet the main protagonist, Miyabi (Kaho Seto), we see the tragedy that eats away at her throughout the film. While reading Virginia’s Wolfe’s The Lighthouse in the kitchen of her high-rise apartment, she fails to stop her daughter plunging to her death. Fast-forward a few years and a broken marriage and we find that she is working as a call girl and living with her DJ boyfriend (Ryuseigun Saionji), all while living in the same apartment and with her daughter’s items still around.
There is a shroud of death covering her, one might say, and that becomes exploited by the film’s antagonist of sorts, a mysterious photographer (Satoshi Oka) whose use of a voice box gives him a unnatural sound while he moves in an almost mechanical way. He is seemingly connected to the psychotic break and disappearance experienced by another call girl and it seems that Miyabi might be next in line. How? With every meeting at his creepy apartment, he takes pictures of parts of her body. Her feet, her legs, her spine. Miyabi is initially suspicious but that feeling fades away as she soon senses that with every photo taken she can detect her daughter’s spirit. She becomes addicted and finds herself departing from the calm façade she has built up to become more morbid.
With each part of her he captures on film, Miyabi finds herself losing something of her essential spirit. As she starts to come closer to the daughter she lost she moves closer to facing the grief that she has tamped down inside of herself but she risks losing everything.
The film is nicely eerie mood piece about the dissolution of identities but also deals with terminally disengaged and depressed society.
The world of the characters that Keishi Kondo depicts is one with a downbeat atmosphere, apocalyptic in a Pulse-like way. Characters exist in soulless, dispassionate urban spaces and cold interiors – shot in non-descript areas of the director’s native Nagoya city, it seems. Drive-by exposition from news reports and terse dialogue between captures an exaggerated version of contemporary Japanese malaise as we hear the economy has stalled, murders are common, and, as the narrative continues, it seems that Miyabi will become part of this cycle of dissolution and destruction.
Many of the characters who live in this space are lost in mourning or enduring tremendous psychological abuse and strain and death is never far. Indeed, Miyabi’s handler (Daiki Nunami) asks her, “Am I talking to the dead?” as he tries to figure out the seemingly malign influence of photographer’s pictures as Miyabi seems drained of life with every job he drives her to. The acting of the cast is pitch-perfect as there is a certain stiffness that seems appropriate to the bleak tone of a film where people have lost vitality and are losing their hope. All in all, it is an exquisite atmosphere that builds dread.
I cannot pretend to have answers as to what is going on as the film engages in non-explanations while presenting unnerving but very fascinating and original imagery and documentary narration surrounding moths and rebirth, but viewers may make connections to the idea that the camera can capture souls. This is bolstered by the fact that the photographer can “remake” people as ghouls in some way. His motivation is unclear but is it entirely evil if he presents people with an opportunity to connect with the dead? This is an engrossing idea to ponder throughout the film while it also helps strengthen the film’s exploration of its themes around mourning and Miyabi’s plight.
At times New Religion has some scenes reminiscent of Pulse and Snake of June, what with the setting or urban ennui and, in particular, the distorted movement of a “ghoul” and the use of a menacing photographer, but they’re impressively well executed. What punches it up in terms of originality is the consistently skilful use of distorted sound and unnatural movement and lighting.
We get a movie where there is striking and bold use of colours and shadows that really delight the eye and terrify the mind. The deep reds and blacks of the photographer’s apartment and have a sense of menace that just builds and builds while the camerawork is hovering and lurking., waiting to plunge us into fear as we watch Miyabi slowly fall apart while enduring haunting or drawing out those exquisite moments of a confrontation between a human and something less than natural. Meanwhile the soundscape created by Zeze Wakamatsu and Akihiko Matsumoto is electronic hums that sound like the gusting winds of a dead planet that is perfectly fitting.
The ambiguous finale suggests that the borders between Miyabi’s depressed interior and objective reality, the grim exterior world, has collapsed and we buy it because the emotional world of the film and the engrossing atmosphere. It’s the end of the world as we know it and it feels appropriate for the age we live in. I’d recommend this film to any fan of horror movies and it signals that Keishi Kondo is a new talent to get excited about.
New Religion plays at the Osaka Asian Film Festival.