Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that I watched Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud as the internet pivoted once again to the worst, when X (formerly Twitter) essentially became a safe-haven for Nazism, and Elmo’s account was hacked to spew anti-Semitic hate. The long-time Japanese auteur has made a career out of psychological horrors that explore our modern anxieties around technology and manipulation, and his latest film touches on how the internet warps our reality. It’s a subject that Kurosawa used almost 25 years ago, but Cloud feels like a modern update to those sentiments.

Indeed, when Pulse was released in 2001, the world was still reckoning with the wide-open potential of what the internet could be. Kurosawa’s oddly prescient film dealt with how the net could be used to connect us all, but would ultimately be used for malevolence. Today, the internet has fully revealed itself mostly as a force for evil, and Cloud follows Yoshii (Masaki Suda), a morally dubious reseller of goods online, and his descent into a hell of his own making.

We meet Yoshii as he’s closing a deal to buy a van-full of machines straight from the source, which he then sells at a significant markup. The big payday, and a run-in with a disgruntled purveyor, prompts Yoshii and his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) to move from Tokyo to the secluded countryside. Their new home is a veritable compound, complete with extra storage, industrial kitchen, and barbed-wire fencing. But if life in the internet age has taught us anything, it’s that nothing stays hidden forever.

Cloud may be Kurosawa’s most narratively straightforward film, eschewing the dramatic twists present in his best work like Cure and Tokyo Sonata. Here is a story where the bad guy slowly gets in over his head, then has to crawl his way out of trouble, with few surprises along the way. But where the film lacks in surprises, it makes up for in thematic resonance and character depth. Yoshii treats every human relationship as a transaction; he’s cold towards Akiko, and treats his loyal assistant Sano (Daiken Okudaira) as nothing more than a minor convenience. Naturally, Yoshii’s shady reselling tactics lead to online hatred from those he’s suckered, and the back half of Cure evolves into an action thriller, as Yoshii tries to escape his fate.

Kurosawa’s magic trick is in painting Yoshii both as victim and perpetrator of his own circumstances, and Masaki Suda’s performance rises to the occasion. Has Yoshii always been a scumbag, or did his reliance on the internet aid in bringing this out of him? By that measure, were Yoshii’s pursuers always prone to violence, or did they simply need an incident to spur them onward? Only a seasoned veteran like Kurosawa knows that there’s more value in leaving these questions unanswered than spoon-feeding us exposition. While Cloud isn’t a pure horror film, Kurosawa still manages to infuse the film with a palpable sense of dread, with unseen violence lurking around virtually every corner.

“Am I so bad?” Yoshii pleads once his captors have cornered him. It’s an off-handed comment, but the line provides a lot to chew on over the course of the third act. Sure, Yoshii probably hurt these men financially, but in the grand scheme of terrible things conspiring on and off the internet, are his crimes really so bad? Recent developments would suggest not, and I can only imagine that more real-world events will prove me correct.

Cloud will be open in select theaters on July 18, before expanding nationwide on August 1.

OSCAR POTENTIAL:

• Cloud premiered almost a year ago, at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. I don’t foresee Japan selecting the film as its official nominee for International Feature, but even if it was, Kurosawa has never received an Oscar nomination.