Chime (film)

Chime (チャイム, Chaimu) is a 2024 Japanese psychological horror short film written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. It stars Mutsuo Yoshioka as a cooking teacher, whose life is disrupted by a chime which induces violent and erratic behaviour in those who hear it.

The film premiered in February 2025 at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival. It went on to be distributed as an NFT via Roadstead, a Japanese platform for "digital video trading" which also produced the film.^[1] It has received positive reviews.

Matsuoka is a cooking teacher. While most students in his class are able to cook calmly and complete their tasks, one student, Tashiro, is distant from the rest, and struggles to complete his work. Tashiro asks Matsuoka if he can hear a 'chime', saying he believes it is a message for him. Matsuoka brushes him off, and Tashiro becomes briefly aggressive.

As Matsuoka is leaving school, another student informs him that Tashiro asked for his address, which they refused to give out. Matsuoka goes on to attend an interview for a job as a restaurant, where he informs the interviewer he will quit his teaching job if hired. In the next lesson, Matsuoka speaks with Tashiro again, who tells him that a surgery has replaced half of his brain with a machine, controlling him on behalf of the chime. In attempting to prove this, he kills himself by cutting into his own head with a knife. After a detective interviews those present, Matsuoka returns home and eats quietly with his family, not mentioning what has happened.

Matsuoka shows another student, Akemi, how to butcher a chicken. After she refuses to follow his example, he abruptly and emotionlessly stabs her to death, then hides her body in a sleeping bag and buries her in the countryside. When he returns to school the following day, a student informs him the detective has returned, investigating Akemi's disappearance. A second student rushes downstairs, informing him that Akemi is upstairs waiting for him. Matsuoka and the student rush upstairs, but find only an empty chair where the student saw Akemi. Something by the chair terrifies the student, and she hurries out of the room. A couple of seconds later, Matsuoka sees the same, and he runs in terror. Outside, he encounters the detective, who notices blood on Matsuoka's hand, which he attributes to a kitchen accident.

Matsuoka attends a second interview at the restaurant, where he rants about himself, and is ultimately refused the job. As the interview ends, a customer at one table attempts to stab another and is restrained. At home, Matsuoka argues with his son after being asked for money, and contemplates killing him. He walks around his house distraught. The intercom rings, but the camera shows nothing. When it rings a second time, he goes outside, finding nobody at the door. Matsuoka walks around the street, before returning to his home.

• Mutsuo Yoshioka as Takuji Matsuoka, a cooking teacher
• Seiichi Kohinata as Ichiro Tashiro, an unusual student in Matsuoka's class
• Hana Amano as Akemi Hishida, another cooking student
• Junpei Yasui as Sakuma
• Kôji Seki as Yoshizawa
• Giiko as Hiroko Tachibana
• Ikkei Watanabe as Detective Makoto Otsuki

The film first screened on 19 February 2024 as part of the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.^[2]

On April 12 2024, Chime was released as a non-fungible token to Roadstead.io, where individual digital copies of the film were sold in the form of "Supertickets", which could be rented or resold to other users.^[3] Owners also received access to Les Cuisiniers of Chime, a behind-the-scenes documentary.^[4]

In October, the film was shown at Beyond Fest, a Los Angeles-based film festival,^[5] and in December, it was screened as a part of the Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival in Jakarta, Indonesia.^[6]

Writing for Polygon, Austen Goslin said it was "perfectly calibrated to unsettle viewers", and described it as one of the "best horror movies of the year so far".^[1] The Film Stage's Rory O'Connor described it as a film that "keeps secrets guarded and lives off the shocks of its knife-edge turns".^[7]

• Cinema of Japan
• Japanese horror

• Chime's official page on Roadstead
• Chime at IMDb
• Chime at Rotten Tomatoes