Last year, Yoshihiro Nakamura's Fish Story saved the world from certain annihilation and became the word-of-mouth hit of the NYAFF. This year, Nakamura's back with another ode to the human connection, Golden Slumber, a brain-melting thriller send-up that's two parts The Big Chill, three parts Bourne Identity and a million parts awesome.

In sunny Sendai, happy-go-lucky Aoyagi reunites with an old university buddy, only to discover he's become a patsy for a labyrinthine government conspiracy to assassinate the Prime Minister. As Aoyagi runs for his life, his old classmates are ruthlessly hunted down by a government hatchet man (Teruyuki Kagawa, Sukiyaki Western Django). All hope seems lost until Aoyagi meets "Kill-O," the friendly neighborhood serial killer, and when old-flame-with-a-kid Haruko enters the fray, stubbornly unwilling to believe the worst of her ex, it looks like the titular Beatles song just might be right - there really is a way to get back home.

Everything in Golden Slumber is deliberate, from the serpentine plotting to the pitch-perfect performances, and even the background actors hold vital clues. Masato Sakai (Climber's High) makes Aoyagi the ultimate everyman, and his laugh-so-I-don't-scream disbelief as his world begins to collapse is devastatingly realistic. As Haruko, Yuko Takeuchi (Dog in a Sidecar) gradually evolves from a silly young girl to a married woman with one toe still dipped in the past. The story's Hitchcock-isms are ultimately a vehicle for Nakamura's personal cinematic earworms: the shattering immediacy of the commonplace, pop culture as a medium for communication and salvation, and a twisty, onionskin narrative that reminds us that friends are everywhere, in the most unlikely of places, and everyone, everything has a purpose. In Golden Slumber, Aoyagi doesn't just uncover a conspiracy, he unlocks the meaning of life, as a bottle rocket starburst signals the birth of the ultimate social network.