Dave Boyle has been circling Japan for two decades — his 2006 debut Big Dreams Little Tokyo, his work as director-producer on Netflix's House of Ninjas — and Never After Dark is what happens when that long apprenticeship produces something small and personal rather than prestige-sized. It's a side hustle in the best sense: loose, affectionate, unbothered by commercial stakes. Moeka Hoshi (Shogun) plays Airi, an itinerant ghostbuster who drives a Volvo across Japan with her dead sister's spirit as a co-pilot — visible only in mirrors, per folklore. It's a neat premise that the film wears lightly, never overselling the mythology. The exorcism-for-hire economy Airi operates in is never belabored; the film just drops you into it and trusts you to keep up. The specific gig here involves a former rural hotel, a smashed-jaw apparition, and a proprietor (Tae Kimura) whose bump-in-the-night problem is complicated by a son (Kento Kaku, who also produced) who needs more convincing than the evidence requires. The romance subplot — bonded over niche music taste — is slight but not unwelcome. Kaku is affable enough that you don't resent the screen time. The film's real personality lives in its effects work. Boyle and his collaborators go explicitly old-school: camera angles catching faces in reflections, wire work, body doubles, and a phenakistoscope — a 19th-century persistence-of-vision toy — used as an astral portal device. It's the kind of practical filmmaking that reads as both budget constraint and genuine aesthetic choice, and the Georges Méliès comparison the Guardian makes is fair. There's a handmade pleasure in watching it that CGI-heavy horror forecloses. Hoshi is the reason to watch. She brings a spontaneity to Airi that the script doesn't fully earn — quick physical intelligence, a sardonic register that never tips into detachment. The shaggy haircut and torn jeans could be costume-department shorthand for 'quirky loner,' but Hoshi makes them feel inhabited. She's doing more work than the material asks. The honest limitation is that the horror never bites. The smashed-jaw apparition is a strong image held at arm's length; the film never commits to making you genuinely afraid. The scares are choreographed rather than felt, and Airi's competence as a professional ghostbuster — she's done this before, she knows the ritual — drains tension that a less experienced protagonist would generate. The film is aware of this trade-off and leans into the 'larky' mode instead, which works until you want something more from the climax than you get. Never After Dark is available on digital platforms from 2 November. At roughly 90 minutes, it's the correct length: a ghost story that respects your evening without demanding your devotion.
