Never After Dark (2026). Japonia. 105 min

At SXSW in Austin it won the Audience Award. At BIFF in Brussels, it claimed the Golden Crow for best film, while Stephen King finds it surprising and disturbing, although we all know what he's like: he hates The Shining (1980)? Your mother saw dead people. And helped them cross the threshold to the afterlife. Your sister is dead but you journey together. You are, of course, a medium, clairvoyant, go-between for the living and the dead. What you didn't know is that, as with Schrödinger's cat, there are serial killers (ours believes that the soul resides in the teeth?) that may be living and dead at the same time. This is the piercing point of an elegant, dark and measured film, courtesy of a US filmmaker who speaks Japanese and was a Mormon missionary in Australia.

• Direction: Dave Boyle
• Cast: Moeka Hoshi, Kurumi Inagaki, Kento Kaku, Mutsuo Yoshioka, Bokuzo Masana

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HotSpring SharkAttack 2: Great Kyushu Showdown (2026). Japonia. 88 min

AI very kindly tells us the following: "A huge swarm of cloned sharks emerges from thermal waters and volcanoes in the Kyushu region, sowing complete chaos. A high school student and wrestler must save the tourist town of Yukuni by using a mysterious sound and song". That's not at all bad. Nor is it wrong about the style: ?Tokusatsu (practical special effects and miniatures in the style of the monster classics of Japanese cinema) blended with B-movie?, but what it doesn't know is the huge affection we have around these parts for Morito Inoue-san, the great new sensei of films about kaijus you might find around the house or your local hot spring. Morito not only adores Jaws (1975), Shin Godzilla (2016) and Shin Ultraman (2022), but also holds a degree in Fine Art, and is involved in contemporary Japanese theatre.

• Direction: Morito Inoue
• Cast: Ruka Shibata, Kiyofumi Kaneko, Masaki Naito, Takuya Fujimura, Yuko Nakanishi, Sumiya Shiina, Hiroki Yasumoto