Overlook Film Festival 2025 – Most of us will care for our parents or grandparents one day as they age. Yet, watching them transform through the aging process can be tough. The loved one we recognize changes. That’s probably why there’s so many horror films about the aging process. Best Wishes to All, also known as Mina ni sachi are, plays with this concept and features some truly unsettling imagery.

Directed by Yûta Shimotsu, who co-wrote the script with Rumi Kakuta, the film stars Kotone Furukawa as an unnamed nursing student who visits her grandparents at a remote location. It’s not long into the runtime that our lead learns there’s something off about grandma and grandpa. In fact, something sinister lurks beneath their happy veneer. To state that they act strange is an understatement. At one point, they snort like pigs at the dinner table and give an odd speech about how pigs are meant to feed humans. In other eerie sequences, the granddaughter catches her grandmother at the end of a long hallway, standing before a mysterious door. The grandmother doesn’t speak, and the door and what lurks behind it become a repeating, frightening presence.

A little short of the halfway point, the granddaughter discovers a grisly secret about her loved ones. Yet, no one in the town finds it odd. In fact, what transpires, even the shock of it all, adheres to some bizarre tradition everyone partakes in. It’s here where the film resembles elements of The Wicker Man, in that everyone in a remote village partakes in a violent ritual. The community poses a threat to the protagonist, in this case the big city granddaughter. If she doesn’t conform and follow their old ways, she risks her safety.

The reasons why the grandparents and the rest of the villagers do what they do becomes apparent late in the film. However, it’s surprising how nonchalantly it occurs and how the protagonist reacts. It’s a little too understated, and in fact, it’ s a bit mystifying. This film’s weakest points pertain to the writing and the script. It doesn’t feel like everything quite congeals here.

Flaws aside, the uncanny imagery and horrific sequences carry this movie. This film flaunts its Takashi Miike influences, especially some of his earlier works like Audition, Ichi the Killer, and his “Imprint” episode from Masters of Horror, which was so gruesome that it was yanked from the air for a while. This is not a slow-burn, J-horror film with ghosts that climb out of TVs or wells. No, this film is a violent romp that’s not for the weak-stomached. What some of these strange characters endure will make a viewer squirm.

Best Wishes to All has a jangled plot, but it’s filled with nightmare scenarios and vicious scenes.  This Japanese feature is more Takashi Miike meets The Wicker Man than it is Ringu.