Ikai (2022)

Rumors have spread even through the most skeptical villagers, giving way to fear and hysteria. It’s not just a matter of gossip this time. The blood-stained leaves indicate that evil creatures are getting closer and closer to humans. It is believed that a new demon has turned up in the underworld. Its will is to cross the doorway into our world as soon as it finds what it is looking for. Such a situation requires the priest to head to the village, leaving the shrine under his niece’s control, the priestess.

The crowd’s fear hasn’t reached the shrine far away in the mountains, where the priestess, Naoko, works as usual, too busy to worry. Sweeping and sweeping, time goes by, with or without the priest. Without giving much importance to this sort of demon and ghost stories she ascribes to fearful children, Naoko leaves the shrine to get to the river before it gets dark. Villagers’ dreads seem to take shape in the gloomy forest. She keeps walking, increasingly tense, until he... развернуть