*limited run* Cloud (2024) | Region-Free (Blu-Ray) | English Subtitles

Title: Cloud (2024)

Genre: Thriller / Drama / Crime

Plot Synopsis
A factory worker turns digital reseller, exploiting online commerce to flip products at high margins. As his side hustle takes off, he resigns, moves into a new house, and brings in an assistant while his partner moves in. But as his profits grow, so do the grudges—online customers and suppliers gather, locate his address, and launch a violent vendetta. Pursued into the woods, he’s kidnapped with plans for a livestreamed punishment. His ex-assistant intervenes in a bloody rescue. In the aftermath, alliances collapse and a Faustian promise of limitless profit looms, leaving morality and survival in question.

Cast and Crew

• Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

• Writers: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

• Cast:

  • Masaki Suda as Ryosuke Yoshii

  • Kotone Furukawa as Akiko

  • Daiken Okudaira as Sano

  • Amane Okayama as Miyake

  • Yoshiyoshi Arakawa as Takimoto

  • Masataka Kubota as Muraoka

YouTube Trailer: Cloud | Trailer 

IMDb Link: Cloud (2024) 

Reviews from Letterboxd

1. Paul Duane – ★★★★☆
   “Ryosuke has a factory job that bores him and a side hustle that seems to be of more interest to him, buying items online in bulk and reselling them for the biggest profit he can manage… It’s 21st Century Capitalism, the horror story. Even if you play by the rules, you will make enemies, and friends, you never wanted to make. The ending features one of KK’s best transportation scenes… A muted but quietly devastating film about what being alive in 2025 feels like.”

2. Adam Nayman – ★★★★☆
   “That it takes a while for Cloud to reveal its form as a best‑served‑cold thriller… Yoshii doesn’t see himself as a class warrior… he’s very much his own crazy, nasty‑ass animal… The interplay between impulse and instinct—and the carnage that ensues when those mechanisms go haywire—is an essential component of Kurosawa’s cinema… Cloud is a film of cavernous and dilapidated interiors… a sick parody of abundance…”

3. Ben Challoner – ★★★★½
   “A dark satire on how connected we all are whether we know it or not, but as usual Kurosawa layers it with sharp edges that tackle everything from ambiguous intention to consequence to vigilantism. It’s an erratic watch and I relished every minute!”

4. Elliot – ★★★★☆
   “Wheeling and dealing down the highway to hell… looks from the outset like a fairly wonky, off‑beat sort of action thriller, but come the credits it feels closer to an abstract deconstruction of the genre… Online mob mentality casually drifts into armed vigilantism… A baffling, last minute left‑turn into metaphysics…”

5. Matt Neglia – ★★★½
   “Finally caught up with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s CLOUD… It takes a while to find its rhythm, but once the third act hits… what starts as a simple online hustle spirals into a dangerous reckoning of violence & unnerving dread… I loved how it explores the internet’s insidious power to turn ordinary people into thieves & killers under the cover of anonymity. Cold & brutal, its message lands with pinpoint precision.”

Meta Description:
A tense Japanese thriller from Kiyoshi Kurosawa, exploring the dark underside of digital commerce and mob justice as a reseller’s greed invites lethal consequences.