By Steve Erickson

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa transforms a revenge thriller into a chilling examination of guilt, conspiracy, and the violence that permeates modern life.

Serpent’s Path, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Will begin streaming on Criterion Channel and several other VOD outlets on October 1.

Ko Shibasaki in Serpent’s Path. Photo: Manuel Moutier/Cinefrance Studios/Kadokawa Corporation/Tarantula

Hundreds of action movies have followed men who, after losing a family member, become sorrowful but steely killers—usually to avenge the murder of a girl or woman. Serpent’s Path, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s remake of his own 1998 film, takes up the same premise. Without quite subverting it, Kurosawa’s new version pursues with unusual vigor the devastation of living with guilt, hypocrisy, betrayal, and mistrust. The two films share many elements, especially early on, but this Serpent’s Path makes one crucial change: its avenger is a woman. It also moves the action from Tokyo to Paris. And it addresses the lethal danger of conspiracy theories—how they can manipulate people into violence—without weakening its condemnation of the Epstein class, whose members really have sexually abused children.

Sayoko (Ko Shibasaki) and Albert (Damien Bonnard) make an odd pair. A Japanese psychiatrist who lives and works in Paris, Sayoko leads a detached life. Her outward behavior offers few clues to her personality or past. She’s calm and collected to the point of iciness; Albert is a twitchy bundle of nerves.

Albert had been investigating the Minard Foundation, a corporate charity that claims to help children. His eight-year-old daughter, Marie, was found dead in the woods, brutally tortured. He and Sayoko believe the foundation’s true purpose is to traffic poor children to wealthy abusers. They kidnap Monsieur Laval (Mathieu Amalric), an accountant who worked for the charity. Albert accuses him of serving “the Circle,” a secret group within the foundation that kills children. Chained to a wall, deprived of food, and forced to soil himself, Laval implicates the foundation’s director, whom Sayoko and Albert set out to abduct. This is only the first link in a chain of increasingly violent acts.

Kurosawa shoots Serpent’s Path from a distance. When Laval is tied up in a suburban warehouse, the camera often holds him in long shot. In one scene, Sayoko and Albert drink coffee while two men fight over a gun, their struggle heard but not seen. Violence erupts without warning. Albert has a habit of killing people before they can offer a full account of their actions or motives.

Surveying several recent horror films for the website Calenda Critica, critic Nuria Silva invokes anthropologist Marc Augé’s concept of the “non-place,” which he defined as “spaces of late capitalism characterized by circulation and anonymity.” Silva notes that even a home can become a non-place. Sayoko’s apartment fits the description. Rather than showing her relaxing there, Serpent’s Path fixates on a Roomba gliding across the hardwood floor. The apartment is dominated by her laptop, where she receives video calls from her partner in Japan.

Kurosawa has long been drawn to decaying warehouses. The garage in Serpent’s Path is lined with ugly green tiles, its walls stained. As Sayoko and Albert torture their captives, the space fills with spilled food and urine. The building been so thoroughly abandoned that it can house corpses without attracting public attention. Crucially, the institutional spaces where Serpent’s Path unfolds are no more inviting or humane. Kurosawa frames his actors walking down the centers of hallways and streets, leaving expanses of space around them. Paris has been emptied out, physically and emotionally.

The contrast between Sayoko and Albert could hardly be starker. Her motivation is one of the film’s central mysteries; she’s a chilling character to contemplate. Kurosawa has spoken of “a sense of emptiness that the Japanese woman exudes from the very beginning of the film.” When Liam Neeson or Keanu Reeves play men who kill out of grief, they never entirely surrender their audience-pleasing charisma. Shibasaki achieves something closer to a quietly repulsive numbness — this is a woman whose heart has been hollowed out by violence. Serpent’s Path reveals her history in small, deliberate drips.

When Kurosawa made the original Serpent’s Path, he was only a year removed from his international breakthrough, Cure. After that, he returned to his roots, through some quickly shot, straight-to-video films. This remake gives the director an opportunity to present a more polished version, and he takes the cultural opportunity to reflect on the many changes between 1998 and 2024. Serpent’s Path offers another variation on Kurosawa’s world, where everyone is complicit in violence and exploitation, where the least powerful are most likely to be held the most accountable. The film’s final glimpse into Sayoko’s eyes is like a coffin lid slamming shut. Serpent’s Path  and transforms a familiar revenge plot into a damning indictment of the modern world.

Steve Erickson writes about film and music for Gay City News, Slant Magazine, the Nashville Scene, Trouser Press, and other outlets. He also produces electronic music under the tag callinamagician. His latest album, Bells and Whistles, was released in January 2024, and is available to stream here. He presents a biweekly freeform radio show, Radio Not Radio, featuring an eclectic selection of music from around the world.