THE debut feature film from Yuta Shimotsu sees a young nursing student (Kotone Furuwaka) discover the shocking supernatural practices that have brought her rural grandparents much happiness during a rare visit.
The unhinged revelations in Best Wishes To All, now streaming on Shudder, lead this young woman to question her choices, sanity, and reality itself.
During her stay in her rather unusual grandparents’ countryside home, she discovers an old photo album with a girl’s face scratched out and then starts to get flashbacks of her earlier childhood and the secrets her family have kept from her all her life.
Best Wishes To All is one of the best Japanese horror films I have seen in years. With its bizarre and nightmarish twists and perverse worldview, Shimotsu’s debut feels like what J-horror classic The Grudge might have looked like if directed by the master of all things dark and twisted, Takashi Miike.
As the dark family secrets and the mysteries of this rural community are revealed, our unnamed student struggles with her new reality and the depraved nature of those closest to her.
‘Who is she to judge?’ they ask.
‘Aren’t we happy?’
Life in the country is certainly very different from her time studying in Tokyo, but is any of it real? If her family are so happy, shouldn’t she just embrace their way of life?
An old woman living deep in the woods away from the crazed townspeople has her own take. She assures the young woman that it’s all an illusion, and it’s only what’s to come in the next life that is real.
This off-the-wall folk horror film, with it’s social commentary on modern society, will appeal to fans of films such as Midsommar, The Happiness of the Katakuris, and The Visit.
It is one creepy and downright eccentric film, and I loved it!
