Trailer Park | Penance

Japanese horror-fest Penance Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s trademark creepy twists as well as a subtle commentary on Japanese society and gender expectations.

Night of the hunter: A brutal murder warps the lives of a group of girls in a sleepy Japanese town.
Night of the hunter: A brutal murder warps the lives of a group of girls in a sleepy Japanese town.

Master of Japanese horror Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s eerie, intense psychological thriller Penance (Shokuzai) unfolds on a sleepy small town playground, when a mysterious stranger approaches a group of young friends, then kidnaps and brutally murders one of the girls. 

Wracked with grief, the victim’s unhinged mother Asako (Kyoko Koizumi) demands that the shaken survivors identify the killer or face a penance of her choosing. 

 

Growing up in the shadow of this tragic debt, each of the four girls cultivates a warped survival mechanism – avoidance, desperation, fear and obsession.