Hirokazu Koreeda’s films reap many rewards, if one is willing to take them at their own pace. The comparisons to Yasujiro Ozu are somewhat tired but also fitting—and much to the later Japanese filmmaker’s credit. His Monster (or Kaibutsu, in the original Japanese) is no different, though perhaps the more salient comparison would be to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, since both films fold differing perspectives over the same central event in order to gradually complexify both the story as well as the viewer’s initial impressions.

Monster is a masterclass in playing with the viewer’s expectations in this regard; from its very title, and from the rising action of the plot, one is primed to expect something sinister at work, as the son of single mother Saori Mugino (Sakura Ando), Minato, begins to exhibit strange behavior at home. He becomes withdrawn, and refers to himself as a “pig brain in a human body” and talks about being reborn in ways that seem to indicate suicidal ideation. After she finds him wandering through a dark tunnel, singing to himself, long after he was supposed to be back home from school, he flings himself out of the car on the drive back. An emergency MRI yields no cognitive abnormalities—what exactly is wrong with young Minato? […]