Dave Boyle Explores Japanese Ghost Stories With Gripping ‘Never After Dark’

Now playing in theaters, Never After Dark centers on Airi (Moeka Hoshi), a solitary medium whose job is to take restless spirits out of the physical world and send them back to the other side. For Dave Boyle, the writer and director behind the feature, Japanese horror and its ghost stories served as a direct influence for Never After Dark.

Airi (Moeka Hoshi) lives a solitary life, and her only regular source of contact is her late sister Miku (Kurumi Inagaki). When Airi is hired to investigate a haunted house that may have a malevolent spirit (Mutsuo Yohshioka), she may finally have met her match. Tae Kimura co-stars as Teiko, the woman who hired Aira, and Kento Kaku (who also produced the film with Boyle) plays Teiko’s skeptical son.

Dave Boyle’s interest in Japanese cinema began at a high school English class. While studying Macbeth, Boyle checked out Akira Kurosawa’s cinematic epic Throne of Blood. That film changed his cinematic point of view.”

“That movie just really blew my mind,” Boyle told Deepest Dream. “(It) opened my mind to what the possibilities that cinema had to offer. I’m generally a big fan of world cinema. It was a sharp left turn in life that introduced me to Japanese culture and speaking the Japanese language. I would say I’m highly influenced by Japanese storytelling, structure, and some of the things we’re depecting in Never After Dark.”

With his latest movie, Boyle wanted to play with what audiences might expect from a Japanese ghost story.

“A lot of the story structure and some of the things that we’re depicting in Never After Dark are a deliberate experiment to kind of reverse some of the norms of what a Japanese ghost story would ordinarily offer,” said Boyle, who created the hit Netflix series House of Ninjas and directed the acclaimed feature Man From Reno.

Full interview with Dave Boyle and Moeka Hoshi:

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