New Group review: schoolkids stack into human pyramids in Japanese conformity satire

Schoolchildren stack themselves into human pyramids in New Group, Yûta Shimotsu's Japanese horror-satire about conformity, reviewed by the Guardian on 3 November 2026. The film earns full marks for what the review calls its "groupthink set-pieces": students moving en masse as a single, many-celled organism.

The story centres on two outsiders at a super-strict high school. Ai, played by Anna Yamada, is an unpopular pupil who has spent her life trying to fit in. Yu, played by Yuzu Aoki, is a transfer student who resists peer pressure more deliberately. Both discover they are, in the paper's phrasing, "definitely not with the programme."

What is going on at the school?

The institution is harsh at a baseline. Things then degenerate. Students begin forming human pyramids and turning into mindless drones, and it becomes clear something extremely peculiar is at work. The Guardian's critic hears echoes of The Faculty, Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Williamson's 1998 high-school riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers — but warns that Shimotsu's film is a less straightforward narrative than the American one. Where Rodriguez went for fun and games, New Group prioritises eeriness and mystery.

The verdict is mixed but respectful. The review describes the film as "an intermittently amusing Japanese social satire about conformity" with "flashes of brilliance" — yet one that "lacks the kind of engaging characters that could have taken it to the next level." In plain words: the ideas outclass the people carrying them.

How are the bodies on screen achieved?

The choreography is the film's strongest asset. Some of the image-making, the critic writes, is "fantastic": ensembles of students acting as one collective creature, with the human body as the basis for the memorable stunts. The review draws a direct comparison to Zach Cregger's recent Resident Evil reboot, in which multi-limbed mutants are performed by human dancers and acrobats with circus-style skills, then augmented with a smattering of FX.

CGI appears in New Group too, but the critic notes it "is not the be-all-and-end-all, and this makes a difference: there's a tangible sense of bodies on the line." That physical commitment — real performers, real risk — is what lifts the set-pieces above standard genre effects work.

Where does the film leave Shimotsu?

New Group will likely find its audience among viewers who prize atmosphere and body-based spectacle over plot mechanics. The Guardian's takeaway is that the groupthink sequences — massed, choreographed, physically real — are what viewers will remember, even if Ai and Yu never quite come into focus as characters. Shimotsu's next project will show whether he can marry his set-piece craft to people worth following.