Dave Boyle’s Japan-set ghost story toys with familiar J-horror territory, then quietly turns into a classical ghost story: a slow, sly mystery where there’s more to be scared of than a simple haunting.
★★★★
Set in rural Japan, Never After Dark follows Airi (Moeka Hoshi), a working medium called to a remote hotel to deal with a persistent disturbance – doors opening and closing, strange noises… and oh yes, a ghost wandering around with his jaw ripped open.
Once the mother-and-son owners have been booted out, director Dave Boyle takes his time to lead us through the scene, and Airi herself is similarly methodical. She moves through the house like she’s clocking a problem, not bracing for an attack. She notices patterns, little clues, keeps track of what she finds. The tension builds quietly as Airi works the scene, like CSI: Ghostbusters Japan. To begin with, Airi thinks this is just another cleansing job, and ignores the warnings of her sister that something more dangerous is at play. That’s a bad call, because her sister has special insights – because she herself is also dead.
This is a classically constructed haunted house mystery, where the key to dealing with the ghost is identifying the clues and joining the dots before it’s too later. There’s a stretch in the middle where the film takes its time to the point of testing the audience – circling, waiting, nudging forward in small increments. If you want constant escalation, it’ll feel like it’s dragging its feet. If you’re on board, it’s doing something more interesting: taking us through Airi’s methodical process of deduction. This would be competence porn, except that Airi isn’t always as competent as she thinks.
Hoshi anchors the scares, playing Airi with a calm, matter-of-fact authority that makes the whole thing work. No theatrics, no panic, occasionally touching base with her dead sister who lives inside mirrors – she processes what she sees, reformulates her theories, and keeps going. When she picks up a mysterious ringing telephone to hear a creepy ju-on style throat creaking at the other end, she listens for a bit then says “uuuh ok if that’s all you’ve got I’m hanging up.” Box of human teeth hidden in the wall? Not a problem. This gives the film a steady centre, which makes the moments where things start slip all the more threatening.
And they do slip – gradually, then all at once – because ghosts are not the only problem here. (When things finally all kick off, my watch had a message for me: 90dB, do not expose yourself to this volume for long periods. Understood.)
The fun thing about Never After Dark is that it takes images that works feel at home in a Kiyoshi Kurosawa or Takashi Shimizu J-horror, and adds them to a more traditional haunted house procedural. Boyle handles all of this with a sure hand, trusting the audience, and lets the film reveal itself instead of rushing to spell things out.
What you’re left with is a ghost story that – like the comparable Hokum, another great haunted hotel movie out this year – actually has something to solve. Not just a night to survive, but a situation to understand. That alone puts it a step ahead of most of its peers.
Never After Dark played at the Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans
Whitlock&Pope 