We Are Little Zombies

Makoto Nagahisa's 2019 Japanese film brings together four thirteen-year-olds who lost their parents in the same few days. They meet at a crematorium and none of them can cry; they know they ought to be sad and the feeling does not come. So they form a band and turn their own stories into songs. The film tells this in the language of a video game: a structure divided into levels, eight-bit music, text on screen and a camera in constant motion. That formal density is both its strength and its exhausting side. The band becoming famous online and adults immediately trying to turn it into money forms a second line. The question of grief that will not arrive is never resolved. It won a prize at Sundance. Who it's for: viewers who like formally daring Japanese films. Who it's not for: anyone expecting a calm account; the film proceeds as though sounding an alarm.