‘Welcome to the Village’: Tradition takes a twisted turn in the countryside

Cheap houses in the Japanese countryside have recently become a hot topic among non-Japanese, particularly those who are priced out of their own country’s housing market. Likewise, many Japanese who are fed up with city living long for a rural retreat where the pace of life is slow and the locals follow traditional ways.

But as Hideo Jojo’s slow-burn psychological thriller “Welcome to the Village” illustrates with the clarity and starkness of a folktale, cheapness comes at a price, and tradition can be constricting — or devastating.

The screenplay by Jojo and Eisuke Naito is based on actual incidents of murahachibu — the ancient practice of ostracizing villagers considered outcasts by the community. But in the film, this custom takes on a disturbingly contemporary twist.

The thriller genre would seem to be out of Jojo’s comfort zone: Until he directed the 2020 teen drama ”On the Edge of Their Seats,” he was a prolific maker of adult films, with even his later mainstream work featuring erotic themes.

But Jojo handles the story of “Welcome to the Village” with the assurance of a pro, as though he has been cranking up scary-movie tension for years. When smiling masks fall and ugly truths come to light, the impact is skin-crawling, though warning signs were there from day one.

The film begins with a young couple, Anna (Mai Fukagawa) and Terumichi (Ryuya Wakaba), moving from Tokyo to the fictional village of Asamiya to start a new life, with Anna working as an illustrator for remote clients and Terumichi trying his hand at farming. At first, they are delighted with their new home, the realization of a long-time dream. But their next-door neighbors, the middle-aged Mitsuhashis, give off a strange vibe, with the wife (Reiko Kataoka) begging them not to “bully us.”

Anna and Terumichi also quickly discover the villagers are keenly interested in the state of their marriage — their use of separate surnames inspires suspicion, for example — and their plans for a baby, with the checkout lady at the grocery store slipping a pregnancy test into Anna’s shopping bag. How odd, not to mention intrusive.

The smarmy village big man, Takubo (Tomorowo Taguchi), soon takes them under his wing, but his suggestions, such as advising Terumichi to give up organic farming and use pesticides, sound like commands. And when Anna becomes pregnant, the joy of Takubo, his nosy wife (Kaoru Sugita) and other village women give Anna the chills. Why, she wonders, do they say “thank you” instead of the usual “congratulations”?

Despite Anna’s suspicions about the villagers’ intentions, the pliant Terumichi follows Takubo’s advice and starts to do his bidding, leading to a side job in a secret and legally questionable business.

The ensuing downward spiral into violence and death is familiar from other Japanese movies set in the boonies, from Morihei Magatani’s “The Bloody Sword of the 99th Virgin” (1959), with its story of human sacrifice in the mountains, to Yugo Sakamoto’s “Yellow Dragon’s Village” (2021), in which college students become victims of a rural murder cult.

But "Welcome to the Village” foregoes standard genre thrills in favor of a more realistic, if still gripping, investigation into a cultural and psychological heart of darkness.

Fukagawa, a former pop idol turned actor, plays Anna with coiled restraint as the film’s center of moral gravity and emotional strength. Even in flight, she never quite loses her look of steely determination.

But the cute beetle Anna draws in an idyllic rural scene for a magazine cover in reality is a cabbage-devouring pest. An apt metaphor for the residents of Asamiya.