Submitted by admin on Wed, 08/06/2025 - 15:42
"A master of existential dread, Kurosawa was early to posit a creepy side to online culture... Things have gotten even grimmer in Cloud. The malevolence is not supernatural but human." ~ John Powers, NPR
*
"Kurosawa inches back toward the knotted-stomach dread of his horror classics Cure and Pulse with Cloud, albeit accented this time with a healthily morbid sense of humour. And, perhaps more surprising, a serious affinity for action movie shoot-outs." ~ Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail
*
"That tension between modes [of realism and online fantasy] gives Cloudtremendous visceral and intellectual force, plus a persistent air of moral inquiry." ~ Justin Chang, The New Yorker
*
"Kurosawa’s slow, patient direction throws just enough stones into the stagnant waters of Ryosuke’s life to make the vengeance of those he has harmed seem almost justified." ~ Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle

"Kurosawa films the descent into kill-or-be-killed mayhem with his typically masterful visual proficiency — any given frame of Yasuyuki Sasaki’s no-nonsense cinematography can quickly go from bland to ominous." ~ Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

"For all of his genre-bending on display, Kurosawa is interested in something more real and more dark about humanity’s capacity for greed and bitterness, and the quiet ways that the internet can further mutate those diseases in us." ~ Brandon Yu, New York Times

"Cloudis a portrait of merciless 21st-century commerce and social cruelty that’s filtered through various genre lenses." ~ Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

"Kurosawa films psychological torment with real gravity, and he films physical cruelty with humorous detachment. The absurdity of his vision matches our topsy-turvy reality." ~ Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture

"A brisk film that leaves one pondering its themes, especially what it means to live in an era when nothing is real." ~ Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com
*

"Unfolding at a hauntingly subdued register before unleashing its pent-up tension during its final act, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloudskewers the anonymity that characterizes our presence in online spaces." ~ Zachary Lee, Chicago Reader

"Kurosawa Kiyoshi is an empathetic yet pitiless poet of the modern void." ~ Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine

"Cloudis a sophisticated send-up of social commerce culture." ~ Adam Nayman, The Ringer