By Terry Sherwood
Yuta Shimotsu’s Best Regards to All is an eerie, feature debut that melds horror with pointed generational critique. While the idea of blaming older generations for societal ills isn’t new, especially in contemporary Japanese and Korean cinema with work like Chie Hayakawa’s film Plan 75. Shimotsu pushes it into darker, more surreal territory, blending dread with social unease in a way that’s both familiar and off-kilter.
The premise is simple: a soon-to-be nursing student from Tokyo visits her grandparents in the countryside. What begins as a warm reunion slowly unravels into a psychological spiral. A red door upstairs triggers repressed memories; the grandparents start acting increasingly bizarre, such as making animal sounds and licking hands when a creeping realisation dawns—something is deeply wrong. The appearance of a childhood friend offers a moment of reality, but soon the protagonist is pulled into a nightmare with no clear escape. Her only hope? The arrival of her parents.
What Director Shimotsu nails is mood. The horror doesn’t pounce—it creeps and lurks in familiar objects and smiles. The film’s rhythm is deliberate, and each scene is layered with quiet tension. Shimotsu doesn’t go for jump scares; he lets the grotesque unfurl slowly, culminating in a disturbing portrait of generational rot and complicity.
Kotone Furukawa as the young student caught up in this anchor the film with a strong, if occasionally cliché, performance. She conveys vulnerability well, though some of her more extreme moments feel pushed, except for the glorious moment of chopping wood in the forest. Still, she holds the centre effectively. The real standouts, though, are the grandparents who shift from quirky to unnerving with precision of a voice inflexion or a look. Their descent into perversity is chilling.
The film owes much of its unsettling power to the presence of Ju-On director Takashi Shimizu as producer. The influence is clear in the escalating grotesquerie and the rural setting that hides something sinister beneath its beauty. Ryuto Iwabuchi’s cinematography captures this perfectly: sunlit exteriors and shadowy interiors play off each other. Sound design, too, plays a crucial role, helping create a slow-building sense of claustrophobia.
Best Regards to All screened as part of The Overlook Film Festival 2025.
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