Horror movies tend to be most chilling when they take a seemingly normal setting and then violate it. Films that already start deep in the uncanny valley have to work much harder to unsettle their audience.
That’s an issue for “New Religion,” Keishi Kondo’s confidently executed but curiously underwhelming debut feature. It takes place in a world that’s been knocked off its axis. Characters speak to each other in affectless tones like they’ve been hypnotized. Scenes are bathed in intense color schemes borrowed from Nicolas Winding Refn, accompanied by a near-constant pedal drone of dread. And that’s before things start getting weird.
Maybe this is all a projection of the film’s traumatized protagonist, Miyabi (Kaho Seto), whose young daughter takes a fatal tumble off the balcony of their apartment in the opening scene. Several years later, Miyabi is working as a call girl and still living in the same home, though she now shares it with an unnamed, music producer boyfriend (Ryuseigun Saionji, from madcap electronic outfit BBBBBBB).
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