Film production has continued in Japan throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but the movies themselves have tended to act like nothing has changed.

That’s not a complaint you could hurl at Yuya Ishii’s “A Madder Red.” The prolific director’s latest drama, which he also wrote and edited, takes place in an all-too-familiar world of face masks, plastic shields and sanitizer.

Designed to keep people apart — and, ostensibly, safe — they provide a fitting backdrop for Ishii’s depiction of a society in which rules abound, but empathy is in short supply.