Kiyoshi Kurosawa, director of Cure, License to Live, Charisma, Pulse, and, recently, the truly unsettling Chime, has yet another queasy, uncomfortable, and terrifying tale for 2024: Cloud.

This suspenseful psychological thriller masterfully intertwines the hope of the capitalist dream with the gritty realities of modern life. The film follows Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda), a man of meager means who supplements his income by reselling goods online. His ambitions to get out of his entry-level misery and onto the high life with his aimless girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa) leads him into a battle of morals and his relentless pursuit of profit makes him several enemies – a whole forum is constructed to pile on the hate from afar. As the enemy list grows longer, it manifests into a genuine and very present threat – an angry mob, bound by a collective rage, on the hunt to kill Yoshii by any means necessary.

Cloud explores the intersection of status and loss through landscape and atmosphere, using a disused factory as a gritty backdrop for shady dealings while utilizing a serene, secluded glass-bound lakehouse as a metaphor for the fragility of status and income, amplifying the tension of supply, demand, want and desire. Yoshii’s story reveals how the unflinching pursuit of material gain leads to personal and societal disintegration.

With our job markets in limbo globally, a living wage seems to be a thing of the past, and long hustle hours winning out over the quality of work, it’s no wonder Cloud resonates with our anxieties of the time. Couple that with internet trolls, keyboard warriors, and the mass hysteria and social discord that can be incited at the drop of a hat. Kurosawa’s gift for blending psychological horror with the mundane is splendid to watch. Yoshii buckles under the weight of his own ambitions – a reflection of the hidden dangers of seeking solace and success in the digital world.

Cloud premiered at the 81st Venice Film Festival, ahead of a September release in Japanese theaters.