Many will argue that Chime, screening at Berlinale, needed a longer runtime as it leaves your brain scrambled and your nerves on edge. But herein lies the genius of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. He has no intention of fully explaining this journey and no desire to give up the secrets held within his 45-minute rollercoaster of terror. Chime is awaiting a UK release date.
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is known for his ability to dovetail domesticity with terror while adding layers of ambiguity. In his 1997 film Cure, he explored the darkest corners of the human mind through a series of ritualistic murders as a disoriented detective attempted to walk through a maze of impossible questions, themes he would return to in 2006 with the outstanding Retribution. Meanwhile, in Pulse (2001), he wrapped us in a devilishly terrifying story of social media and tech, as a group of young people accessed a mysterious website that asked, “Do you want to meet a ghost?”
Kurosawa’s films helped place J-horror on the world map, paving the way for a host of movies from Audition (1999) to Confessions (2010). His latest 45-minute film, Chime, premiered at Berlinale, and once again, he plunged his audience into a vivid nightmare with no escape.
The initial set-up is disarmingly simple as Takuji (Mutsuo Yoshioka), a teacher at a small cooking school, goes about his daily work guiding a group of students in essential culinary arts.
Takuji isn’t a warm man; from the outset, he appears distant, his mind elsewhere as he instructs his pupils, but most students appear content. However, one student is edgy and distant, with a blank expression and stilted movements as they struggle to complete the simple cooking tasks every other young person manages. They are aloof, erratic, and random in their actions, but when they tell Takuji they hear a chiming noise in their head, Takuji brushes them aside with devastating consequences.
To say anything more would spoil the baffling, terrifying and intriguing tale Kurosawa weaves. But, following the events of that fateful lesson, one thing slowly becomes clear: Takuji’s work and home life are off-kilter, his daily routines a tangled web of chilling and odd encounters, his world fragmented, and his behaviour cold, calculating and random.
Many will argue that Chime needed a longer runtime, as it suddenly leaves your brain scrambled and your nerves on edge. But herein lies the genius of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. He has no intention of fully explaining this journey and no desire to give up the secrets held within his 45-minute rollercoaster of terror.
Instead, like a nightmare you can’t describe, the following morning — one you wish you could revisit, even though it was petrifying to gain the answers you seek — he leaves us hanging. From the chilling performance of Mutsuo Yoshioka to the cold greys and blues of Koichi Furuya’s cinematography and the exquisite sound design that haunts you for hours afterwards, Kurosawa’s Chime is a beguiling, unsettling and horrifying teaser and a masterclass in slow-burn terror that leaves an indelible mark.
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