After helming two singular films (Blank 13, Zokki) movie star Takumi Saitoh (Shin Ultraman, NYAFF 2022) earns his directorial black belt with this sublime horror work. He first turns the genre on its ear, replacing the proverbial 'old dark house' with a bright, prefab idyll, a glaringly ambiguous symbol of the coveted utopian dream. Yet trouble never strays too far from paradise and no sin goes unpunished. Young patriarch Kenji (Masataka Kubota from Takshi Miike’s First Love) moves his expectant wife and young daughter from a chilly, dilapidated abode into preternaturally comfortable new digs. Little do they know, the claustrophobic basement that controls the always-perfect temperature will soon ominously reflect all of their collective nightmares. Brimming with palpable paranoia and striking visual metaphors, Saitoh’s latest exposes all the pretensions and secrets that make our imperfect society so dangerously duplicitous, while creeping the bejesus out of us at the same time!