Movie Review
New Group
4/10
TLDR
New Group has a killer image in its ever-growing human pyramids, and the practical work is impressive, but shoddy CGI and a story more interested in its message than its characters keep Yûta Shimotsu’s Shudder follow-up from ever getting under your skin.
Where to watch: Streaming on Shudder and AMC+ November 6
The Facts
Synopsis: High school student Ai sees her world collapse when a strange cult-like mentality gradually turns people around her into mindless followers who can transform simple gymnastics routines into a nightmarish dance of death.
Director: Yûta Shimotsu
Stars: Anna Yamada, Yuzu Aoki, Pierre Taki
Rated: Not Rated
Running Length: 82 minutes
The Thoughts
In a strange twist of fate, I happened to watch Yûta Shimotsu’s first feature, Best Wishes to All, the night before I sat down with his new one, New Group, which Shudder starts streaming November 6. I’d gone looking for a scary movie outside the box, and Best Wishes to All came with a lot of good reviews. I walked away wishing I hadn’t trusted so many of them and had read more into the mixed ones. For all its interesting ideas about happiness and what it means to be successful, it felt a bit too slow and meandering, wandering down inconsequential tangents that never locked into the story.
Still, that one at least created a few hair-raising sequences. Shudder’s New Group covers much of the same territory, and I was about halfway through it before I noticed how similar it was to the film I’d seen the night before. Once I made the connection that they shared a director, it all made sense, because conformity, happiness and individuality are clearly at the forefront of Shimotsu’s mind right now. New Group almost plays like a sequel of sorts, but it lacks the underlying intensity of his first film, and unlike that one, it never got under my skin.
Shudder’s New Group Starts With One Student on All Fours
Ai (Anna Yamada, Golden Kamuy) is a shy, anxious high school student who would rather blend in than be noticed, which shouldn’t be hard at a school that leaves so little room for individuality to begin with. Then one day a boy drops to all fours on the school field and refuses to move. Classmates climb on top of him in silence, the pile keeps growing, and instead of breaking it up, the principal (Pierre Taki, Like Father, Like Son) cheers it on and orders everyone to take part.
Before long, a strange, cult-like mentality is turning the people around Ai into mindless followers who can transform simple gymnastics routines into a nightmarish dance of death. Her only fellow holdout is Yu Kobayashi (Yuzu Aoki), a transfer student just back from time in the United States, who keeps asking the question nobody else will: why does anyone need to belong this badly? Shimotsu wrote the script with first-time screenwriter Momoko Sahara, and as setups go, it’s a real doozy.
The Pyramids Are the Real Stars
Credit where it’s due: the shapes and forms the students make, at least the ones not obviously created by a computer, are genuinely impressive when you can tell they’re really there in front of the camera. The pyramid scenes were shot out in the cold with members of Nippon Sport Science University’s gymnastics team doing the stacking, and you can feel all that effort on screen. When real bodies stack up and simply stop moving, it’s stranger than any special visual effect could manage.
The best moments come when the crowd stops acting like a pile and starts acting like a machine. There are a few improvised, machine-like structures built out of people that try to corner our heroes, and they’re creepy and weird in all the right ways. Taki has a ball as the principal, beaming with pride while his students lose themselves. Yamada and Aoki make a likable pair of holdouts, even if the film becomes more interested in the crowd than in either of them. (And don’t think I didn’t clock that their character names sound like “I” and “You,” which is either too clever by half or exactly the point in a movie about the group swallowing everyone whole.)
When the Blood Goes Digital
Then there’s the CGI, which is very shoddy at times and undercuts the practical work every time it shows up. I don’t get the use of CGI blood here. It’s obvious they’re using it because it looks fake, but it also just comes across as silly, and that robs the film of any strong hold on terror. Horror lives and dies on whether you believe what’s in front of you, and the moment a splash of digital red looks like it came from a different, cheaper movie, the spell breaks.
It’s a shame, because the contrast is so stark. One minute you’re marveling at a real stack of students and the logistics it must have taken to pull off, and the next you’re looking at a digital Sims-ish stand-in that wouldn’t fool anyone. For a movie built on the creepiness of the human body bent into unnatural shapes, those cheaper shortcuts feel like a real misstep.
More Message Than Movie
That leads to the bigger problem. New Group is so busy trying to convey its message that it forgets to tell a story. After a while, it becomes very repetitive or simply tangential. Like Best Wishes to All, it’s chewing on how much of ourselves we give up to belong. That film imagined happiness as a finite resource, where one family’s peace depends on someone else being trapped to absorb the suffering, and its characters bend to peer pressure and tradition to keep their own status. New Group takes the conformity half of that idea and makes it literal, with students who’d rather become part of a faceless heap than stand out.
There’s real material there, and Japanese horror has a long history of turning social pressure into nightmare imagery. The J-horror wave that gave us Ringu (and, by way of Gore Verbinski, The Ring) and Ju-On: The Grudge did it with cursed tapes and angry ghosts. Uzumaki did it with an entire town obsessed with spirals. Ju-On’s own Takashi Shimizu even pops up here in a cameo as a TV pundit trying to make sense of the pyramid phenomenon. Closer to home, it’s hard not to think of Body Snatchers or Midsommar, which understand that a smiling crowd can be scarier than any monster. The difference is that those movies keep building their dread, while New Group makes its point early and then keeps making it.
Shudder deserves some credit for keeping its door open to oddballs like this one. Between Best Wishes to All last year and New Group now, Shudder has made room for international horror that goes after institutional anxieties directly, and I’d rather see a swing like this than another haunted house or zombie retread.
One Group I’m Happy to Skip
I’ll give New Group this much: at a brisk 82 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, and the pyramids are something to see. Shimotsu clearly has a lot on his mind about the herd and the people who refuse to join it, and two films on the same subject tell me he isn’t finished saying it. But a striking image needs a story to hang on, and this one too often feels more random than pointed.
If you loved Best Wishes to All, New Group is worth a look on Shudder, if only to see those practical pyramids for yourself. Everyone else can feel free to stay out of line on this one.
The Final
New Group stacks up a striking idea and then just keeps stacking. The practical pyramids are impressive, but cheap CGI and a story that repeats itself make this one group you can skip joining.
4/10
Where to watch: Streaming on Shudder and AMC+ November 6
Reviewed by Joe Botten
Joe Botten is The MN Movie Man, a Twin Cities film critic writing spoiler-free reviews since 2012. He also writes for Loud and Clear Reviews, a Rotten Tomatoes approved site. Find him on Instagram and Letterboxd.
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