Yes, the synopsis for this debut film by Yusuke Iwasaki film in the festival program said it was a darkly comedic horror but for some reason that hadn’t really sunk in.

It starts off as a pretty deadpan satire of urban life. Sakai (Shôta Sometani) works at a convenience store and it looks like he’s dead inside with no real interest in his job or any ambition. The other people he works with have much more distinct personalities, taking the job seriously, or having much more hope for their future and the good in what they do. The owner of the shop is an expressionless older man (Masahiko Nishimura), who is a stickler for the rules to the point where he is willing to lose staff rather than bend.

When bright faced Ogawa (Erika Karata) starts working there to support her hairdressing studies, she gradually gets under Sakai’s skin. We can see she has a moral compass and is not as afraid as the others to speak up when she thinks something is wrong.

The horror aspect starts slowly, there is a death or two, sometimes played a little bit for laughs and making the audience gasp. As Sakai’s star begins to rise though, so does the horror and by the end, it is relentlessly hard to watch.

It’s not the easiest film to enjoy because most of it is very static, with lots of silences building for us the feel of the monotony of the job. You have to be comfortable to sit with this and let it flow around you, and so it is then quite jarring when the blood starts to fly.

Is there a message? Maybe that the horror is within us all if we let it.