You’ll find a gripping new internet thriller in the ‘Cloud’

John Powers | July 18, 2025

It wasn’t so long ago that the internet felt like a glorious joyride into the future, one that would make us all smarter and more connected. Alas, the dreams of digital utopia have long since curdled. What once looked like a stairway to paradise increasingly seems like the low road to perdition.

The internet and its discontents run wild in Cloud, a strangely gripping new thriller by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the prolifically offbeat Japanese filmmaker who’s spent the last four decades putting subversive spins on traditional genres — he was making alt-horror before anyone was using that term. A master of existential dread, Kurosawa was early to posit a creepy side to online culture. In his 2001 movie Pulse, ghosts use the internet to invade the world of the living. Things have gotten even grimmer in Cloud. The malevolence is not supernatural but human.

Masaki Suda stars as Yoshii, an affectless young factory worker who’s obsessed by his side-gig as an online reseller. Trading under the moniker “Ratel,” he buys up things like sketchy medical devices and knockoff handbags then resells them online at huge markups. Yoshii’s only real companions are a fellow reseller, whose desperation he coolly ignores, and his girlfriend Akiko — that’s Kotone Furukawa — with whom he shares a relationship that appears less romantic than expedient.

With business booming, Yoshii quits the factory and moves to a country house where he hires a sweet-faced young man as an assistant. But he’s left a lot of angry people in his wake – friends he’s abandoned, guys he’s snookered or ripped off. And though the internet is good for his scamming, it’s great at bringing together the people who hate him and fueling their resentments. What starts off as chat-room grumbling about Ratel escalates into flesh-and-blood vigilante violence.

This intrusion of one reality into another is a Kurosawa trademark. His work is renowned for taking everyday reality — in this case, the world of online shopping and resellers – and showing how it gets infected by malignant forces. In his masterpiece Cure — a genuinely scary and unsettling film — an eerily languid loner mysteriously transforms ordinary people into serial killers.

Here, the opening half of the film is resolutely, even grubbily down to earth. It’s defined by the addictive rhythm of Yoshii’s work – scooping up products cheaply, bringing them back to his unlovely apartment, posting them for sale, and then waiting for the ding of a successful purchase. The streets, the factory, the shops, the computer screens — Yoshii’s world could hardly seem more prosaic.

Yet in the second half, this ordinariness is shattered by a tense, exceedingly long action sequence in which Yoshii must fight for his survival. There are warehouse shoot-outs, chases through the countryside, surprise escapes, and profound personal betrayals, all building to a payoff that left me thinking of Dante.

While such violence may make Cloud sound Tarantinoesque if not full-out John Wick-y, Kurosawa’s not turned on by bloodshed. In fighting for his life, Yoshii discovers things that shake him to his core. He comes to grasp who he really is, what he’s capable of, and where his life is taking him. And in watching the guys who seek to harm him, we grasp that, like Yoshii, each of them is a lonely untethered soul, egged on by worries about money, or a feeling of entrapment, or a painful sense of impotence, or sometimes, just a taste for murder and mayhem.

In fact, for all his genre trappings, Kurosawa has always made films that explore the fault lines in modern society. While the title Cloud partly refers to the online world, the film itself suggests that its characters are caught in a greater, deadlier cultural miasma. Yoshi and his enemies are symptoms of a dehumanizing, profit-driven society that has trained them to treat relationships as transactional, not personal, and that has turned the splendid possibilities of the internet into a catalyst for their basest impulses.

Small wonder that the only character in Cloud who seems happy is the one you suspect may actually be Satan.

Transcript:

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. In the new psychological thriller “Cloud,” a young man earns money reselling black market goods online, only to discover he’s unleashed dark forces he can’t control. The film, made by veteran Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, opens today in New York and around the country over the next few weeks. Our critic-at-large John Powers says “Cloud” uses its wildly unpredictable story to offer a portrait of a society that’s lost its bearings.

JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: It wasn’t so long ago that the internet felt like a glorious joyride into the future, one that would make us all smarter and more connected. Alas, the dreams of digital utopia have long since curdled. What once looked like a stairway to paradise increasingly seems like the low road to perdition. The internet and its discontents run wild in “Cloud,” a strangely gripping new thriller by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the prolifically offbeat Japanese filmmaker who spent the last four decades putting subversive spins on traditional genres. He was making alt horror before anyone was using that term. A master of existential dread, Kurosawa was early to posit a creepy side to online culture. In his 2001 movie “Pulse,” ghosts use the internet to invade the world of the living, and things have gotten even grimmer in “Cloud.” The malevolence is not supernatural but human.

Masaki Suda stars as Yoshii, an affectless young factory worker who’s obsessed by his side gig as an online reseller. Trading under the moniker Ratel, he buys up things like sketchy medical devices and knockoff handbags then resells them online at huge markups. Yoshii’s only real companions are a fellow reseller, whose desperation he coolly ignores, and his girlfriend Akiko – that’s Kotone Furukawa – with whom he shares a relationship that appears less romantic than expedient.

With business booming, Yoshii quits the factory and moves to a country house, where he hires a sweet-faced young man as an assistant. But he’s left a lot of angry people in his wake – friends he’s abandoned, guys he’s snookered or ripped off. And though the internet is good for his scamming, it’s great at bringing together the people who hate him and fueling their resentments. What starts off as chat room grumbling about Ratel escalates into flesh-and-blood vigilante violence. This intrusion of one reality into another is a Kurosawa trademark. His work is renowned for taking everyday reality – in this case, the world of online shopping and resellers – and showing how it gets infected by malignant forces. In his masterpiece “Cure,” a genuinely scary and unsettling film, an eerily languid loner mysteriously transforms ordinary people into serial killers.

Here, the opening half of the film is resolutely, even grubbily down-to-earth. It’s defined by the addictive rhythm of Yoshii’s work – scooping up products cheaply, bringing them back to his unlovely apartment, posting them for sale, and then waiting for the ding of a successful purchase. The streets, the factory, the shops, the computer screens – Yoshii’s world could hardly seem more prosaic. Yet in the second half, this ordinariness is shattered by a tense, exceedingly long action sequence in which Yoshii must fight for his survival. There are warehouse shoot-outs, chases through the countryside, surprise escapes and profound personal betrayals, all building to a payoff that left me thinking of Dante.

While such violence may make “Cloud” sound Tarantinoesque, if not full-out John Wick-y, Kurosawa is not turned on by bloodshed. In fighting for his life, Yoshii discovers things that shake him to his core. He comes to grasp who he really is, what he’s capable of and where his life is taking him. And in watching the guys who seek to harm him, we grasp that, like Yoshii, each of them is a lonely, untethered soul, egged on by worries about money or a feeling of entrapment or a painful sense of impotence or sometimes just a taste for murder and mayhem.

In fact, for all his genre trappings, Kurosawa has always made films that explore the fault lines in modern society. While the title “Cloud” partly refers to the online world, the film itself suggests that its characters are caught in a greater, deadlier cultural miasma. Yoshii and his enemies are symptoms of a dehumanizing, profit-driven society that has trained them to treat relationships as transactional, not personal, and that has turned the splendid possibilities of the internet into a catalyst for their basest impulses. Small wonder that the only character in “Cloud” who seems happy is the one you suspect may actually be Satan.

DAVIES: John Powers reviewed the new film “Cloud” by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

On Monday’s FRESH AIR, journalist Joseph Lee talks about his new book “Nothing More Of This Land,” an intimate look at what it means to be a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe on Martha’s Vineyard, an island that’s both a sacred homeland and a luxury playground. I hope you can join us.

For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I’m Dave Davies.