After I watched Chime (2024) at home, I started washing up dishes in the kitchen and felt a rising pressure in my head.
At 45 minutes length and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Chime builds tension with no release. Obviously its short length might preclude a fuller narrative experience, more time given to understand what’s going on. But my favourite Kiyoshi Kurosawa endings, even of films running at 2 hours (Cure, Retribution) have this feeling of questions unanswered, a lingering ambiguity that keeps it living in your head. Chime echoes motifs and themes from Kurosawa’s earlier films but presents them in a stripped back format.
Mutsuo Yoshioka is very good in the lead. A calming, focused cooking teacher who witnesses a violent death in his class, and then hears a mysterious chime. In this film, there’s bloodshed and killing. But more unsettling was the everyday, the moments between the scares. The sound of cans crashing into recycling tubs outside while a family eats dinner silently. The flop-sweat of a job interview going badly. We also really see one scene where our man hears the mysterious chime; the rest of the time, the chime is heard in the score and we can only assume he’s working really hard to not portray hearing it. Which is even more unnerving.
Available to rent on Roadstead as a NFT, but you can find a copy elsewhere, possibly online. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 