‘Journey Beyond the Night’: A bad trip worth savoring

When film festivals moved online at the height of the pandemic, it became harder for movies to generate buzz in the traditional sense. Without the galvanic effect of having a roomful of critics and influencers watch something together at once, even heavyweight contenders struggled to leave their mark.

All the same, Takayuki Kayano’s “Journey Beyond the Night” seemed to get people talking when it screened — or, more accurately, streamed — at last year’s virtual Skip City International D-Cinema Festival. After receiving a couple of awards, this audacious low-budget feature is now getting a well-deserved theatrical release.

It’s a film that is best approached without any prior knowledge, so I’d advise curious readers to stop here and turn straight to the Sports section. In the tradition of movies from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” to Ben Wheatley’s “Kill List,” “Journey Beyond the Night” starts in one place — and genre — but ends up somewhere entirely different.

The opening act is dour, even a little dull, reminiscent of countless other Japanese indie flicks. We meet Harutoshi (Yoshinari Takahashi), a frustrated 20-something who’s still clinging to his dream of becoming a professional manga artist while letting his girlfriend pay the bills.

When he heads off for a reunion with some old university pals, they tease him about being a kept man but don’t pry too much into his nonexistent career prospects. Still, it’s clear that the rest of the group has been moving on with their lives, while Harutoshi remains stuck in prolonged, petulant adolescence.

There’s a forced jollity to the proceedings as the friends head off for an overnight stay at a rural lodge that they used to visit during their university days. Harutoshi grows increasingly sullen after his girlfriend calls to inform him he hasn’t won the manga prize he’d been pinning his hopes on, but he perks up with the late arrival of his old crush, a sad-eyed beauty named Saya (Yumiko Nakamura).

Although there’s some knowing humor and a light dusting of pathos in these scenes, the film doesn’t really pick up until its midpoint switch — a surprise that’s made all the more effective by the total absence of foreshadowing. It would be unfair to reveal where “Journey Beyond the Night” heads next, except to say that the movie’s release just in time for Halloween is entirely appropriate.

Kayano, who also wrote and edited the film, is careful not to let the pace slacken after executing his big switcheroo. There are some delightfully weird — and funny — sequences during the second half, in which Harutoshi forms an uneasy alliance with another of Saya’s former admirers, Kento (Takafumi Aoyama).

Throughout, Kayano leaves the boundaries of the film’s reality deliberately unclear. When the end credits roll, it’s hard to say how much of what we’ve just seen actually happened, which just adds to the uneasy atmosphere of the closing shot. Beneath it all lurks a cautionary message about the perils of getting too hung up on the past.

Rewatching the film recently, it didn’t impress me quite as much as when I saw it during Skip: Once you know what’s coming, there isn’t much else to hold the attention. But even if “Journey Beyond the Night” is a trip you only need to take once, it’s a memorable ride.