From Japanese master of horror Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse), watch the trailer for the Serpent’s Path and Chime double feature below.
1998’s Serpent’s Path has been newly restored in 4K, while 2024’s Chime will only be presented in theaters and will never be available digitally or on home media.
In Serpent’s Path, obsessed with avenging his young daughter’s murder, yakuza subordinate Miyashita recruits Nijima, a brilliant yet strangely detached math teacher, to help carry outcarry out a scheme to kidnap and torture the man allegedly responsible.
But the plan goes awry when their target, Otsuki, fingers another mobster as the mastermind behind Miyashita’s tragedy. As the two partners ascend the yakuza chain of command in search of the true culprit, Miyashita and Nijima follow the cold, calculating logic of revenge, descending into a moral abyss from which they may never surface.
Show Aikawa, Teruyuki Kagawa, and Yurei Yanagi star in the dark gangland thriller with philosophical overtones.
In Chime, culinary instructor Matsuoka witnesses the suicide of a young student, driven to insanity by what he claims is a chiming sound that controls his mind. Soon, Matsuoka begins hearing it too and descends into a mental abyss that warps his perception of reality and gives vent to his darkest impulses.
Expertly blending psychological portraiture and hallucinatory mystery, Kurosawa offers a chilling depiction of madness that interrogates the very stability of our everyday existence, with the director’s patented creeping tracking shots and complex sound design fashioning an immersively terrifying and unnerving cinematic experience.
Mutsuo Yoshioka, Seiichi Kohinata, Hana Amano, Junpei Yasui, Koji Seki, and Giiko star in the 45-minute psychological horror short.
The Serpent’s Path and Chime double feature opens at the IFC Center in New York City on March 27 via Janus Films, with additional screenings to be announced.
