Dave Boyle is back, and if you've been following his career, you know he doesn't just stick to one lane. His latest project, Never After Dark, already picked up the SXSW Midnighter Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at Overlook, which usually means two things: it's weird, and it actually delivers on the genre promises.
The story follows Airi, played by Shogun star Moeka Hoshi. She's a wandering medium who spends her days helping restless spirits move on, which sounds like standard horror territory until she gets called out to a creepy, isolated country home. There, she runs into a bizarre apparition that totally throws off her usual routine. But the real twist isn't the ghost. As Airi digs into the property's history, she realizes the biggest threat isn't supernatural at all. She ends up hunted by the living, which turns out to be way more unpredictable than dealing with dead people.
It’s an interesting pivot for a exorcism-style story. Ghosts usually follow rules, but people? People are just unhinged.
The cast Boyle put together around Hoshi is stacked with familiar faces from some of the best recent Japanese projects. You've got Kento Kaku and Kurumi Inagaki from House of Ninjas, Mutsuo Yoshioka (Chime), Bokuzo Masana (Tokyo Vice), and Tae Kimura (All Around Us). Having a cast that knows how to handle grounded, moody tension is going to make or break a plot like this, especially when the threat shifts from creepy phantoms to human malice.
Never After Dark hits theaters on September 25th. If you like indie genre flicks that twist familiar tropes into something a bit dirtier and more chaotic, this one is definitely worth keeping on your radar.
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