Never After Dark review: a ghost story with old-school tricks and charm

By Daniel Okafor

Dave Boyle, an American director, has made a Japanese-language exorcism horror film. That's the punchline, and it's also roughly the point. Never After Dark is so steeped in Japanese lore that the credits come as a mild shock, according to the film's own reviewers, who note that a cold viewer might expect a Japanese director behind them.

Who made it, and why it feels like a side project

Boyle's Japan credentials are real. He wrote, directed and starred in the 2006 feature Big Dreams Little Tokyo, about an American sharing a flat with an aspiring sumo wrestler. More recently he was a key director-producer on the Netflix series House of Ninjas. Never After Dark appears to have grown out of that collaboration as a spun-off venture with Ninjas star Kento Kaku, who produced the film and takes a supporting role.

The result, per the source review, is "a larky, low-stakes, one-for-funsies exercise — inventive and full of charm even if the scares are sort-of predictable." That reads as a fair verdict. Charming, slightly predictable horror is a genre with a long pedigree.

What's the story?

Moeka Hoshi, fresh from Shogun, stars as Airi. She wears torn jeans and a raggedy haircut, drives a Volvo, and works as an itinerant ghostbuster for hire across the Japanese countryside. The ghost of her dead older sister Miku (Kurumi Inagaki) accompanies her everywhere, visible only in mirrors, as folklore dictates, and available to offer advice about imminent danger and the general vibes of the spirit world.

Airi's latest job takes her to a former hotel in the sticks. The new proprietor, Teiko (Tae Kimura), has been hearing bumps in the night and receiving creepy phone calls — from spirits or perverts, or possibly both, as the review drily puts it. Teiko's son Gunji (Kaku) doubts the supernatural explanation but warms to Airi anyway, especially once they discover a shared taste for niche music.

The haunting itself is a man with a gruesomely smashed jaw, played by Mutsuo Yoshioka, who wanders the corridors scrabbling at the wainscoting. Airi interacts with him on the astral plane through a ritual involving:

• a candle
• burnt offerings of her own hair — hence the shaggy haircut
• a phenakistoscope (a 19th-century persistence-of-vision toy), in this case one depicting a spirit rising from a body

Getting the smashed-mouth spirit out of the house turns out to be anything but the run-of-the-mill exorcism Airi expected.

How do the effects hold up?

Boyle and his collaborators work old-school, in the best sense. The review compares the physical effects to films by Georges Méliès — camera angles capturing faces in mirrors and reflections, wire work, and well-choreographed body doubles. The sort of thing actual phenakistoscope users might have admired.

The characterisation, the review concedes, isn't especially complex or nuanced. But Hoshi brings "a spontaneity and intelligence to the lead role that is consistently winning." One strong lead performance plus practical effects plus a charmingly silly premise is a workable formula, and Boyle seems to know it.

Whether a spin-off lark between a director and his Netflix star can build an audience beyond genre completists is the open question. On this evidence, it doesn't need to. It just needs to keep the candle lit and the mirrors angled.