Creepy it is, and eerie, disturbing, macabre and surreal, just some of the descriptions of the latest psychological thriller from Japanese director and horror genre specialist Kiyoshi Kurosawa, whose technique has been compared to that of the late and great Stanley Kubrick.

The story centres around a detective, Takakura, who leaves his city job and retires following a very nasty stabbing with a fork of an innocent bystander by a multiple murder suspect in police custody, a shocker that viewers witness Now a university lecturer in criminal psychology with a young and demure wife, Yasuko, and living in the quiet suburbs of a quiet suburban town where neighbours ignore each other, his old detective instincts are stimulated when a former colleague tells him about the unsolved disappearance of a whole family from nearby six years ago, a case the police have closed the file on. Meanwhile his well-meaning and good-hearted wife is getting to know his very strange neighbour, Mr Nishimo, who looks like he might well be the killer her husband is searching for, and who has a pretty young daughter, Mio, who ramps up the tension when she tells Takakura that her “father” is a total stranger.

Creepy is more suspenseful than gory horrific, though there are some nasty moments that will make you jump, as well as cheer as retribution finally arrives. It’s very well acted too with Teruyuki Kagawa satisfyingly skin-crawling shuddery as Mr Nishimo, Hidetoshi Nishijima as the dogged detective, Yuko Takeuchi as his sweet and trusting wife and Ryoko Fujino as Nishimo’s unfathomable daughter, until the denouement. Creepy, made in 2016 and screened to the press in late November, is being released in cinemas, and on digital HD on November 25 by Eureka Entertainment.