Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been creeping up on audiences with his distinctively atmospheric chillers Cure, Charisma, and the remarkable Pulse. In Bright Future he fuses genres-science-fiction thriller, male bonding melodrama, youth culture piece-to create an enigmatic, eerie study of marginalized young men and the dreams that burn and die within them. Japanese star-boy Tadanobu Asano plays a listless brooder working a dead-end factory job, his only companions his pet jellyfish and his comparatively dim coworker, a young man with a similarly antisocial attitude. Beyond amazing haircuts and some disconcertingly vivid fashion choices, neither seems to take pleasure in this world, nor recognize any brightness in the next. A sudden act of violence, however, leads to a final scheme: set their poisonous glowing jellyfish loose in Tokyo's water supply, and hope for a “bright” future indeed. Kurosawa etches images far uneasier than the most violent thriller: a bloodied child walking alone down a tunnel, a dead hand frozen so that a finger points outward, rivers that glow halos.