Spoiler-Free Review
New Religion is a 2022 Japanese horror/drama film by Keishi Kondo. A grieving mother struggles to return to normalcy after her daughter dies in an accident, falling prey to a strange man who claims he only wants to take her picture; but as the Polaroids pile up, her connection to reality keeps slipping, and horrific crimes keep happening in her community.
This is a phenomenal debut feature for Kondo. There’s a lot of Lynchian “wtf” going on with the plot, but even as you’re scratching your head, you never lose track of the complex emotional undercurrent to each scene. You feel what it all means even if you can’t quite parse it. The director smartly lets the scenes breathe, which could have grown dull if crafted by a less deft hand, but the cinematography, acting, and script infuse the inaction with a palpable dramatic weight. Add in creative visuals, a compelling mystery, and metaphorical subtext that keep your gears turning long after the credits roll, and you have one of my favorite “horror” movies I’ve seen this year.
I’m reminded of the first time I saw Enemy by Denis Villeneuve and immediately had to a) rewatch it to find out what the heck was going on, and b) put Villeneuve on my list of must-watch directors. I’m happy to welcome Kondo to that list.
Grade: A-
ANALYSIS – Spoilers ahead!
Miyabi is spiraling after her child (Aoi) fell off a balcony under her watch. She’s working as a call girl, getting harassed by her angry ex-husband, and rewatering her plants over and over again in a kind of fugue state. Her boyfriend, an underachieving but plucky DJ, does what he can to get through to her, and sometimes does; we see real joy in their relationship at times, but it’s always fleeting as she is crushed under her guilt. He’s mostly caring and tender to her (minus his breaking point with the plants), even as her delusional episodes get worse.
Akari, a coworker of Miyabi’s has recently snapped, going on a killing spree and committing acts of terrorism. Miyabi is assigned to Akari’s former “patron”, the enigmatic Oka, who simply wants to take pictures of her body parts – not all together like some weirdo, just one body part at a time, starting with her “barbarous spine”. Normal! She assents as long as he stays away from her face.
As she continues these visits, her grasp on reality slips more and more. First she’s setting a spot at the table for her dead daughter, then she’s reading to her, then throwing her a birthday bash. Boyfriend (he’s not given a name as far as I can tell) does his best, finally resolving to spend the rest of his life with her in an emotional moment. Miyabi, though, solemnly responds: “I don’t love anymore. I can’t find it.”
Her driver for the escort service, Aizawa, does some digging into what might be going on, culminating with breaking into Oka’s apartment. He finds the photos of Miyabi along with various other people, as well as a stack labelled “Akari” – those last ones now blank, no body parts in sight. Suddenly, a naked man comes stumbling out of the closet after him, struggling to get his legs under him like a newborn giraffe. Aizawa ends up tumbling down the stairs, injuring his own leg, but the naked man just gets a glass of water, some clothes, and leaves the apartment. He’s a man on a mission. Oka, however, shows up and stares menacingly into Aizawa’s eyes, seemingly hypnotizing him.
By this point Miyabi has completely succumbed to her alternative reality. She’s at the same table as the opening scene, reading the same book, as Aoi waters plants on the balcony. This time, she’s able to pull her back from the edge and share her knowledge of plants with her. Things are great, until she sees the replacement succulent Boyfriend got for her as an apology. Anachronistic to this timeline, it clues her in to the fact she’s dreaming. She tells Aoi she’s not real, that she’s dead; there’s a tearjerking moment of her apologizing as Aoi tells her how much the fall hurt, and then she watches with acceptance as Aoi climbs that fateful stepladder and goes over. We feel we’re headed for a happy-ish ending where Miyabi can forgive herself and move on.
But wait! Miyabi wakes up once again at the table, cup of coffee and book in their places. From behind, she hears Aoi call for her, and this time she simply turns and holds her in a long embrace. At the same time, we see flashes of Miyabi’s photograph in Oka’s apartment, now blank; then, we see her hand come out from behind one of those curtains. Either she’s some kind of clone/android (could explain the pictures as reference photos), or she’s been mentally reprogrammed; her mind trapped in a dreamworld with her daughter, while her body goes on to strangle Boyfriend (who was heartbreakingly putting a resume together to try to improve their lives) and blow up a school. We see another man about to get on a subway train with the telltale distorted sounds telling us he’s another brainwashing victim; I couldn’t tell if it was Aizawa or the ex-husband or somebody else, even on rewatch, but I don’t think it matters.
Those are the bones of the plot, but the subtext is where the fun really starts. We’re told early on that the economy of the film is in shambles, the population is aging, the country in a state of decay after “the emergency” (COVID-19?). We also get bits of a documentary on a particular invasive moth that can cross the ocean, that is seemingly unkillable and an imminent threat to local ecology. Perhaps that’s just another nod to the moth/cocoon motif, but I read it as: there is something coming in from elsewhere that is causing the issues they are seeing. Just an observation, but the t-shirts Miyabi and boyfriend where are all references to US culture (most noticeably one of the Obama family, but also Def Leppard, Marilyn Monroe). Is it a coincidence that Akari targets a museum, causing “immeasurable damage” to Japanese culture? One possible reading of the film worth discussing might be, globalization from the west is causing economic and cultural damage to Japan, as well as emotional and psychological damage to its people. It goes without saying that we’re only a few generations removed from Nagasaki and Hiroshima, when the US did literal damage to schools, hospitals, and museums, similar to the characters in the film.
“There’s no beginning or end in a moth’s life. Moths are envious of living things with a history,” Oka tells Miyabi. If the “moth” is the thing that emerges from Oka’s cocoon/closet – the final form of Akari, Miyabi, and the naked man – then the “moth” here could be a radicalized mass murderer or terrorist. They are envious of things with history – destroying ancient traditions and the local cultural icons. They exist only to consume and destroy. Remember, Oka calls Miyabi’s spine “barbarous” – a telling word, given that the root was used by the Greeks and Romans to describe outsiders who didn’t respect their traditions. Oka finds people already broken by grief and tragedy, and he wears away at them. At first he respects their boundaries (no face pictures), but by the end that’s not even a second thought, of COURSE he can take a picture of her eyes. He promises impossible things – giving them back their loved ones, for example. “I got to know that anybody can stare back at the moth. You can have everything you’ve ever wished for by staring at it.” The ultimate fantasy of a consumer: if I see it, it’s mine. Manifest my destiny, Oka. We are moths drawn inexorably to whatever particular flame sparks our joy, even if it turns out to be a bug zapper.
This is the “New Religion” of the title, perhaps. Escapism, consumerism, late stage capitalism. Indoctrination, in this film anyways, comes from destroying identity; you are not Miyabi, you are an arm, a belly button, a spine. You are a collection of parts, nothing special; there is no soul holding these pieces together. When the process is complete, there is no “you” at all; you’ve faded from the pictures. You’re a mindless drone doing the bidding of whoever programmed you.