Best Wishes to All review
Shudder dropped another worthwhile horror film on Friday the 13th.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Best Wishes to All
Directed by Yuta Shimotsu
Screenplay by Rumi Kakuta
Starring Kotone Furukawa
Best Wishes to All Review
Horror movies don’t always choose to make you hate their primary antagonist. There are plenty of slasher movies where the vicious killer is the fan favorite. Some are even smart enough to fill out their cast of cannon fodder with unlikable characters. No matter the set up…you always end up rooting against someone. Best Wishes to All doesn’t subscribe to that theory. It takes its time to reveal its antagonist. It takes even longer for you to figure out what you want to do with it. In Best Wishes to All…it’s easy to hate the situation and harder to figure out who to blame.
A young woman in nursing school (Kotone Furukawa) takes a break from her life in Tokyo to return to her grandparents’ rural home. She finds them happy as they always are…except for when they are acting incredibly strangely. Most of the time they’re in a lucid (and cheerful) state…interrupted by odd moments where they don’t seem to be all there. There are noises coming from a supposedly empty room above them. Nothing is what it seems.
Best Wishes to All is the latest release from the Shudder streaming platform. Shudder’s 2025 has been notable for how un-notable it’s been. We’re nearing the midway point of the year and none of Shudder’s offerings would currently sit in our roughly sketched top ten movies of the year. You should read that sentence with an asterisk…since Dangerous Animals will eventually make its way to the platform and sits in the top ten right now.
The release strategy of Shudder in recent years creates its own interesting narrative. Late Night with the Devil, Oddity and Stopmotion all cracked last year’s top ten list…and all were Shudder releases. Eventually. Each took their turn in theaters before making their way to the service later. MadS was the only true Shudder debut to make the 2024 list. 2023 saw 2 Shudder releases in the top ten…but both were platform debuts (Brooklyn 45, When Evil Lurks). That was down from three movies in 2022…all direct to Shudder (Deadstream, The Innocents and The Sadness). Essentially, 2024 was the best year Shudder has had in delivering ultra-high-quality titles…with the fewest debuting directly on the platform. This year is looking worse in both cases.
But Shudder hasn’t been releasing anything bad either. They’re still in the quality film market. The bar has just slipped from great to good. Maybe they’ll turn it around in the second half of the year. Even if they do…it’s likely that anything of notable quality will be held off of the service until it has seen a theatrical and VOD release, however. The Ugly Stepsister, The Rule of Jenny Pen, The Dead Thing, Frewaka, Grafted, The Surrender and Get Away are all good movies. Some are very good. A couple hit theaters first…the rest didn’t. Some of the best movies added to Shudder this year were uploaded with little fanfare. Little Bites, Do Not Disturb, Tiger Stripes, The Coffee Table, Frankie Freako and They Call Her Death are all interesting, recent movies that popped onto the platform without the hoopla surrounding a big Shudder debut.
The point here is to say that Shudder’s model has changed…and the days of seeing the best movies of the year premiere directly to the service seem to be behind us. That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth its price…there are still plenty of good movies debuting on it. Just…not the best movies. Best Wishes to All is a perfect example of this. It’s good. It’s unique and interesting. But it’s never more than that.
The first half of Best Wishes to All is a slow burn where you aren’t exactly sure what the issue is. None of the characters have names…so forgive any confusion in this plot description. The lead character (played by Furukawa) witnesses many strange moments involving her grandparents before she (and we) understands what Best Wishes to All is about. Once the antagonist, for lack of a better term, is revealed…the movie changes considerably.
In its second half…our unnamed protagonist is forced to confront a dark reality that grasps not only her family…but most of the world around her. Best Wishes to All ramps up the weirdness and delivers some memorable scenes of chaos. What’s most interesting about this is the conflict it creates in how we’re supposed to feel about it. Furukawa’s character is faced with the same issue. She wants to do what’s “right” …but that becomes harder to decipher as the story progresses.
I’m purposely avoiding anything that could be construed as a spoiler here…which makes Best Wishes to All difficult to discuss. The reveal at the midway point is key to the plot. Without the ability to dissect it…we’re left talking about the effects of it in hushed tones. What I will say is this…Furukawa’s character can only act as an avatar for our thoughts for so long. Unlike the viewer…she can take an active role in the story. She does so multiple times…the last of which forces her connection to the viewer to be severed. In a story about the balance between happiness and suffering…Best Wishes to All’s most brilliant moment arrives in its climax. We are the ones left to suffer, in a sense. The movie can’t actively hurt us, of course…but it can leave us feeling emptier than when we started. That’s what Best Wishes to All does really well. Hating its metaphorical antagonist will carry on beyond the roll of this film’s credits.
Scare Value
Best Wishes to All is another quality release for Shudder. It’s a strange, unique little movie that you have to sit with for a while after viewing. Kotone Furukawa turns in a strong lead performance. The ensemble around her is universally strong as well. Best Wishes to All takes its time…revealing its story around the halfway point. Creepy things happen before that…weird things happen after. Both sides are equally entertaining.
3/5
Best Wishes to All Link
Streaming on Shudder
