Kiyoshi Kurosawa had a notably prolific 2024, outdoing Steven Soderbergh in terms of the amount of films releases in a single year. While Chime and Serpent’s Path both featured overt echoes of his earlier work, Cloud feels very different. An action thriller with dark comedic undertones, it’s a more accessible, even playful film by Kurosawa’s standards, while still retaining that characteristically fatalistic edge.

Ryosuke (Masaki Suda) is a factory worker whose booming side hustle involves reselling goods online at an exorbitant mark up. His unapologetically unscrupulous nature is clear from the very first scene: we are introduced to him lowballing a kindly elderly couple for medical equipment, then flipping it for a huge profit. Before long, he quits his day job and moves out of the city, even hiring an enigmatic assistant, Sano (Daiken Okudaira). But as Ryosuke’s greed deepens, he takes more shortcuts, reselling counterfeits and cheap knock-offs, alienating his materialistic girlfriend Akiko (Furukawa Kotone) and spawning a community of angry customers bent on tracking him down.

Kurosawa’s films often hint at the darkness that lurks just beneath the surface – Cure would be the prime example – but where his earlier work was more allegorical or heightened, Cloud strikes closer to real life. In Cloud, he presents a kind of misanthropy that is all-too recognisable as present in the real world, taking aim squarely at 21st century capitalism; predatory resellers, online grifters, and the parasitic economy of secondhand platforms like Vinted, Depop and eBay. Ryosuke never technically breaks the law, but he’s deeply exploitative, profiting off the naïve and the desperate. The very nature of pursuing reselling as a career is shown as being a parasitic one, with one character calling Ryosuke out, saying “you don’t create anything!”

The film is most effective in its first half, methodically charting Ryosuke’s processes as he manipulates the system. Kurosawa’s attention to the mechanics of reselling is oddly compelling – crucially, this is the only time we see anything resembling pleasure pass across his face. But as he becomes aware of the growing backlash, the tension builds masterfully: a dead rat left on his doorstep, a potentially fatal booby trap set for him, a piece of car engine thrown through his window. There is a real sense of unease in these scenes, emphasised through Kurosawa’s deliberate use of sound design and shot composition; He weaponizes silences and empty spaces like nobody else, generating a subtle menace even when there is nothing sinister there.

One of the most quietly effective haunting moments comes when Ryosuke shows Akiko his new countryside home on his phone while on the bus, unaware of a sinister looking figure sat behind them, looking over their shoulders. Once Ryosuke brings the map up on his screen, the man moves to get off the bus, and Ryosuke finally notices him. The sound completely drops out as he realises his error. It’s a haunting, disquieting moment that feels suggestive of the lack of anonymity today, where sensitive information can be acquired through chance encounters like this. There are several similarly chilling moments – the memorable visual of the masked figure emerging through the frosted glass in the background of a scene is chilling, and the casual, offhand way Ryosuke’s victims stalk him is genuinely disturbing in a low-key way.

All of this tension, built up beautifully, is subverted in the second half, when Ryosuke’s victims hunt him down. Rather than a brutal home invasion type film (think Funny Games or The Purge) instead Kurosawa switches gears and goes into action mode, with an extended shootout in an ironworks. It’s a jarring shift, and I’m not sure the film ever truly recovers – it never regains that potent sense of menace from the first half. It’s not that the shootout isn’t gripping, but it can’t help feel a bit lightweight compared to the precision of the first half.

You’d think this would lead to some introspective musing from Ryosuke about the morality of his chosen occupation, but he never atones, or even truly reflects on his actions. Even more curiously, Kurosawa doesn’t seem to be interested in exploring this either. Instead, he pivots to portray the angry mob as equally depraved, muddying the waters until the film loses its satirical bite.

What makes this work so well is Suda’s brilliantly unreadable performance, aloof but insecure, and increasingly paranoid. He’s never particularly likeable, but he exudes a mix of arrogance and insecurity in early scenes that is strangely magnetic. As his assistant, Daiken Okudaira gives a nicely judged, enigmatic performance. The issue I have with his character isn’t so much his sudden reappearance at the end – which could be read as something of a deus ex machina until you remember his actions early on – but more his unwavering loyalty to Ryosuke, someone who seems indifferent towards him at best. It raises the question of who he is exactly, and this isn’t even vaguely answered in that final interaction between the two of them. Furukawa Kotone is similarly confounding as Ryosuke’s girlfriend – she seems to alternate between concern at her partner’s chosen career, and intense materialism, constantly getting overjoyed at the idea of buying more stuff.

Best of all is Masataka Kubota as Ryosuke’s “friend” who originally introduced him to the reseller world. There’s something beautifully off about his performance – the interactions he has with Ryosuke are so uncomfortable in a really intangible way, and his deadpan reactions to the chaos of the second half are among the most memorable of the film.

Kurosawa has previously described himself first and foremost as a genre filmmaker, building his narratives from genre conventions outward. With Cloud, he seems to have aimed for something breezy and action-driven, but his darker instincts seep in despite himself. The extended shootout is thrilling but feels like it’s wandered in from another film entirely, and the abstract ending recalls the apocalyptic conclusions to Cure and Pulse, but lacks the thematic weight of those films, feeling a little disconnected to the rest of the film.

Cloud is a gripping, uneasy ride, packed with stark, unforgettable imagery. It’s an oddity in Kurosawa’s filmography—more linear and accessible than his usual work, and thematically less ambitious than last year’s Chime, which felt more in keeping with his signature style (albeit at half the runtime). Still, it’s easily one of the most compelling films of the year. The slow-burning menace of the first half and Kurosawa’s technical command of the action sequences generate enough tension—and goodwill—to carry the film through its sometimes uneven second half.

Cloud is in UK and Irish cinemas now