Happyend, the Japanese Near-Future Dystopia

It is supposed to be dystopian, but this near-future Japan is largely already the present day in Mainland China. Essentially, the system of social credit and the intrusive surveillance to enforce it comes to Kou’s high school. Unfortunately, he and his friends always lack every just about every form of credit, as the children of immigrants (mostly Korean). The world is truly falling apart, but the principal still won’t cut them any slack in director-screenwriter Neo Sora’s Happyend, which opens Friday in theaters.

The scariest thing about Happyend is that you might not realize its dystopian if you weren’t told upfront. Frankly, people in Tokyo have a right to be a bit on edge, because the big cataclysmic earthquake could come any day now. The scumbag PM tries to deflect and distract by cracking down on Zainichi Korean population. That makes life even harder for Kou and his friends and family.

Kou might be the only one with the chance to attend college. Of course, he needs a scholarship, so he finds himself dependent on Principal Nagai for a recommendation, which the ostensive educator will not let Kou forget. Awkwardly, Nagai is on the warpath against Kou’s ambitionless best friend Yuta, whom he suspects was behind the impressive prank that balanced his sportscar on its rear bumper—which indeed he did, with Kou’s reluctant help.

It is interesting to compare Happyend with the recently re-released Linda Linda Linda, because both films capture teenage friendship on the cusp of graduation. However, Sora makes every mistake the 2005 cult classic nimbly avoids. While the punk rock coming-of-age story shrewdly avoids politics, Sora doubles, triples, and quadruples down. Awkwardly, he settles on immigrant discrimination as his dominant theme, which is a shame, because most of his points are familiar and predictable. In contrast, some of his pointed critiques of the Big Brother surveillance apparatus are quite clever. The cameras and AI might see all, but they are blind to context.

Regardless, Hayato Kurihara is a magnetic live-wire as the edgy yet also apathetic Yuta. Kilala Inori is also quite intense and charismatic as Fumi, the Norma Rae of Kou’s social circle, who tries to convert him into an activist. However, Kou himself is rather dull and the rest of his friends are almost solely defined by the characteristic that make them outsiders.

Happyend is well-intentioned, but too heavy-handed. Sora and cinematographer Bill Kirstein often frame lovely shots, but the unhurried pacing could often more aptly be described as aimless, which is hardly what you hope for and expect from a dystopian film. Too inconsistent to fully embrace, Happyend opens this Friday (9/12) in New York, at the Metrograph.