MOEKA HOSHI IN NEVER AFTER DARK
Bumpy ghostbusting in Japan
"I never work at night. The veil's too thin."
In Dave Boyle's tasty new Japanese language film Never After Dark, Airi (Shogun actress Moeka Hoshi) is a traveling psychic who helps restless lost souls cross over peacefully into the land of the dead. We find her posted at a large, empty, rather beautiful inn in the forests of Hokkaido that could be a n homage to the Overlook Hotel. Because of the empty inn and the batshit craziness, Kubrick's The Shining inevitably comes to mind. The acton will build up nicely at its own steady pace.
Airi has been engaged by a flashily clad hotelier, Teiko Nakazawa (Tae Kimura). She has spotted a slack-jawed ghoul creeping around her property, and wants it dealt with, as one would. Airi thinks this is an easy gig. But her dead sister Miku (Kurumi Inagaki), who appears in local mirrors or other reflective surfaces to speak to her, warns that this is not so and she must be very careful. Indeed things get pretty intense.
First Airi must persuade the new inn owner, who is pushy, to leave so she can work alone. Gunji (Kento Kaku), the property owner's son, is a bit of a wild card, unbelieving and obstructive. Airi starts to work with spinning mirror, drip-soaked candle and wooden matches, and a clipped tuft of her own hair set afire. But the expiatory magic doesn't work.
Then Airi finds an antique Swedish Kungsblandning tobacco tin full of teeth. Someone says ancient Egyptians or Assyrians believed the soul resided in the teeth, and In an ingenious scene, when the teeth spill on the floor, touching them one after another makes their previous owners appear, grimacing.
Then there is an internal storm producing chaos inside the entrance hall or lobby of the place. A policeman comes to the rescue - but meets with mayhem. Airi must resort to violence. Several malevolent figures appear.
Trained originally in Japanese as a Mormon missionary, Dave Boyle has produced multiple works exploring Japanese themes, casts, and culture, like Big Dreams Little Tokyo (2006), White on Rice (2009), and the trans-national mystery-thriller Man from Reno (2014) . He is responsible for a successful Netflix Japan action-thriller series, House of Ninjas (2024), which climbed to the #1 spot on Netflix’s Global Top Ten (Non-English).
With Never After Dark (2026) Boyle, no relation to Danny, has turned to J-horror, recreating something of the spirit of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's cult 2001 techno-horror films Creepy (2016) and Chime (2024). The mood is well enhanced by the glassy chimes and moaning vocals and long alarm tones of Jonathan Snipes’ score. Yuji Hayashida deserves much credit for the set design. Lighting and camerawork are executed with much elegance. With this film Boyle, who wrote and directed, has approached a genre with respect and caution while producing something with a decent fresh edge of the gruesome and the horrible.
Never After Dark, 105 mins., premiered Mar. 13, 2026 at Austin (SXSW), featured at New Orleans (Overlook), also at Brussels, Sydney, Bucheon, and a number of horror festivals. Released by Magnolia Pictures Sept. 25, 2026. Metacritic rating: 75%.