Kairo

The best film of the J-horror cycle and the least seen. Ghosts are getting into Tokyo through the internet, and the effect on the people they reach is not fright but a total loss of the will to continue.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is not interested in scares. He is interested in loneliness, and he films it as physical space: enormous empty rooms, characters placed at the far edge of the frame, a city that empties out over the running time without anybody commenting on it. The famous shot involves a figure walking toward the camera in a way that is wrong and takes a moment to identify.

It was made in 2001, when Japan had the highest internet penetration in the world and a well-documented problem with young people withdrawing from society entirely. The film is about that and it does not need to say so.

There is an American remake. Do not.