-Written by Michelle Vorob.
2024 SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW!
VOID is a short film that is sufficiently eerie and dark enough to classify as horror. Directed by Yusuke Iwasaki, VOID explores grief as experienced by teenager Asagi (Maru Nouchi), after the sudden death of her best friend.
Asagi feels an emptiness she can't put into words; a VOID that only she seems to feel after losing her friend. Everyone else at school, even within her circle of friends, are seemingly going about their days with purpose and joy, as if nothing happened. Only Asagi appears cognizant of the loss and as her pain grows without receiving understanding and compassion, not even being nurtured by her parents during this time, increasingly strange things start to happen.
Asagi is going through the motions of each day, but still intensely grieving her friend. Her friends and classmates are dancing, singing, laughing; they engage in idle small talk, want to have fun and go out for karaoke. Asagi still visits her friend's house to pay her respects. The only glimpse we see of Asagi at home is a dinner table conversation, in which her mother wants to switch to a cheaper phone plan. Neither of Asagi's parents seem connected to her or each other, which is ironic for a conversation about telephone service, and deliberately so. This is a significant and wonderful scene, where we see that Asagi has no support system at home to process her grief and no opportunity to ask for help.
The only thing I didn't love about VOID was that two random men were briefly featured having a conversation at a diner, essentially about negative energy and that as it builds, with nowhere to go, it starts to affect everyone in the vicinity. While the conversation is relevant to what's happening around Asagi, and an interesting [philosophical] point in and of itself, there doesn't seem to be a connection between these two men and anyone else in the movie [or not that I picked up on].
Nouchi does a great job portraying Asagi. We see her vulnerability, we see her sadness. She's able to convey her grief through facial expression and body language. You believe she's silently hurting. As she gets trapped in her grief, the atmosphere and things happening at the school become more bizarre, until an impromptu conversation with a friend about caring for a virtual pet somehow flips a switch and helps Asagi begin to process her grief.
We later see Asagi and her friends out at karaoke, having fun, being kids and Asagi actually begins to have fun, too. We see her smile. We see her sing. It's a touching moment that felt real, grounded. It gives you the feeling that Asagi is beginning to work through her grief and that in time, she'll be okay.
VOID is filmed and edited well. The atmosphere is realistic, mixed with quirky and as bizarre things start to happen, there are even a few “jump scare” moments; at least for me there were! Yusuke Iwasaki effectively uses the horror genre in VOID to visually explore and exemplify fear, loneliness and grief in a compelling way.
Directed by Yusuke Iwasaki
Starring Maru Nouchi
8.5/10 = WORTH RENTING OR BUYING
