Film Review: HAPPYEND (青春末世物語) (2025) - Japan / USA
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 7/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
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A Dystopian Whisper That Needed to Shout
Neo Sora’s debut feature, “HAPPYEND”, arrives on screen like a beautifully composed sigh. It’s a film steeped in atmosphere, drenched in the specific melancholy of a near-future Tokyo humming with seismic dread and the insidious creep of technological control. It promises the friction of a political thriller, but delivers, instead, a meticulously observed, achingly quiet dissolution of a lifelong friendship. This is less a call to arms than a mood piece contemplating apathy as the world shifts beneath its characters' feet.
Our protagonists are Yuta (the effortlessly complacent Hayato Kurihara) and Kou (Yukito Hidaka, radiating a quiet, awakening intensity). High school seniors adrift in that liminal space before adulthood, their bond is the film's fragile core. A reckless prank gone awry becomes the catalyst for their school’s adoption of an omnipresent AI surveillance system. This intrusion acts as a prism, refracting their worldviews violently apart. Kou, whose Zainichi Korean heritage suddenly feels like a target under the system’s cold gaze, begins to perceive the tightening grip of systemic oppression. Yuta, cocooned in comfortable privilege, just wants the music loud, the nights long, and the uncomfortable realities ignored. Their divergence isn’t marked by shouting matches, but by a chilling, glacial silence – the death rattle of a brotherhood.
Where HAPPYEND truly sings is in its sensory craftsmanship. Sora, aided immeasurably by Bill Kirstein’s cinematography, paints Tokyo not as a Blade Runner-esque hellscape, but as our recognizable world dipped in a subtly sinister twilight. The neon glows with unease, the streets feel watched even when empty, and the ever-present threat of "The Big One" vibrates beneath every frame. It’s tactile filmmaking. The true star, however, might be the soundscape. Lia Ouyang Rusli’s score is a revelation – a glitchy, immersive symphony of digital anxiety that crawls under your skin, perfectly mirroring the characters' internal dislocation. It’s not just music; it’s the sound of the future’s low-grade panic attack.
Kurihara and Hidaka deliver performances of remarkable naturalism. Their chemistry in the early, easy moments feels lived-in and genuine, making the subsequent erosion of their friendship resonate like a slow-motion tragedy. You feel the weight of each unspoken word, each averted glance. This is the film’s great strength: capturing how profound bonds can fracture not with explosions, but with the quiet accumulation of indifference and unbridgeable perspective.
Yet, for all its aesthetic prowess and poignant character study, HAPPYEND falters in its narrative engine. Clocking in at 113 minutes, it often feels adrift, luxuriating in its own meticulously constructed atmosphere to the point of inertia. Sora chooses a "slice-of-life" approach within this dystopia – an intriguing concept – but it results in a frustrating lack of momentum. Monumental political shifts and societal suffocation happen around the edges of school club meetings and aimless club nights. We spend significant, repetitive stretches watching Yuta simply... exist, headphones on, tuning out the crumbling world. While this is the point – depicting fascism’s arrival as a banal accretion of CCTV cameras and surrendered freedoms – the film struggles to transform this potent observation into a compelling *drama*. It shows the how of societal collapse beautifully, but forgets to make us feel the urgent stakes for these specific characters beyond their personal estrangement.
Don't be misled by the stratospheric critical aggregates; HAPPYEND is not a masterpiece, but it is a sophisticated calling card. It announces Neo Sora as a visual and sonic stylist of significant talent, with a keen eye for the quiet devastations of modern life. It’s a film I admired more than I loved, a "cool" object that sometimes feels more like a stunningly rendered mood board than a fully satisfying narrative journey. It’s perfect viewing for a contemplative, rainy afternoon when you crave atmosphere over adrenaline, melancholy over resolution. But when the final, beautifully composed frame faded, I found myself wishing this whisper of a film had found just a little more fire, a little more urgency, to truly make its dystopia hit home. It haunts the eyes and ears, but leaves the heart slightly untouched. (Neo, 2026)
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