Best Wishes to All

Lore & Background

The film follows an unnamed nursing student who arrives early at her grandparents' countryside home for a family gathering. She becomes disturbed by moaning from a locked upstairs bedroom and her grandparents' strange behavior, including drowning out the sounds by oinking during a pork supper and defending factory hog farming. After opening the locked room, she discovers a mutilated captive bound to a mattress; she frees him, but he dies after being hit by a truck. The townspeople, including her parents, show no surprise. She learns that families in the region are supernaturally blessed with happiness as long as they keep a human scapegoat in constant suffering. With their captive dead, the family must find a new one or deteriorate. The protagonist reluctantly chooses a childhood friend whose family refused the practice and has suffered misfortune; the friend willingly submits to imprisonment and torture. The protagonist returns to Tokyo, and later sees someone closing curtains in an upstairs window of a house.

Reader's Guide

Best Wishes to All is significant as a modern horror parable that critiques capitalism and societal exploitation. Critics have interpreted it as a commentary on the zero-sum nature of happiness, where contentment requires the suffering of others. The film received generally favorable reviews, with a 77% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 30 critics and a Metacritic score of 70 out of 100. Rolling Stone's David Fear called it 'the best Japanese horror movie in decades,' while RogerEbert.com's Zachary Lee described it as 'a modern parable for our capitalistic society.' Slant Magazine's Gregory Nussen also saw it as addressing an 'epidemic of loneliness.' The film's legacy lies in its unsettling depiction of normalized cruelty and the moral compromises individuals make for personal well-being.

Did You Know?

• The film is based on a 2022 short film of the same name that won the Grand Prize at the inaugural Japan Horror Film Competition.
• All characters in the film are unnamed.
• The film had its world premiere at the Shanghai International Film Festival under the title Happiness to All.
• The protagonist is a nursing student who lives in Tokyo.

The Scapegoat's Bargain

The narrative follows a young nursing student in Tokyo who arrives early for a family gathering at her grandparents' countryside home. What begins as a doting reunion quickly sours as she notices strange behavior and moaning from a sealed upstairs bedroom. A dinner scene—where the grandparents oink to drown out the sounds and defend factory hog farming—signals something deeply wrong beneath the household's surface. After villagers treat casual cruelty and bullying as unremarkable, the student opens that locked door and finds a mutilated captive bound to a dirty mattress. She frees him, but he wanders blindly down the road and dies after being struck by a truck. No adult in town—parents, former classmates, even the driver—shows any surprise. Her father sets the corpse on fire and resumes the family routine. The true horror then emerges: the town's supernatural prosperity depends on keeping a human scapegoat in perpetual torment, and with their prisoner dead, the family will deteriorate and die within days. Desperate, the protagonist selects her childhood friend, whose family had refused the practice and suffered for it. He submits willingly. She returns happily to Tokyo, only to glimpse someone closing curtains in an upstairs window on an ordinary residential street.

Anonymous Faces, Deliberate Choices

A striking structural decision in Best Wishes to All is that every character remains unnamed throughout the film. This anonymity strips the story of individual identity, making the protagonist feel like any young woman who might stumble upon her family's dark secret. Kotone Furukawa portrays this nursing student, a character defined by her struggle to accept that her household's comfort rests on the exploitation of others. Masashi Arifuku and Yoshiko Inuyama play the doting yet deeply unsettling grandparents whose affection masks a monstrous routine. Kôya Matsudai brings depth to the childhood friend, a talented artist forced to take over his family's struggling rice farm after his father fell ill. His family's refusal to participate in the local scapegoating practice has left them mired in poverty, poor health, and agricultural failure. He believes their misfortune is a direct consequence of their moral stance. The deliberate choice to withhold names transforms these characters into archetypes—victim, perpetrator, bystander—echoing the film's broader allegory about how societies normalize the suffering of a few to preserve the comfort of the many.

From Award-Winning Short to Global Screens

Best Wishes to All began life as a 2022 short film by director Yûta Shimotsu, which claimed the Grand Prize at the inaugural Japan Horror Film Competition. The feature-length adaptation was shot during 2022 and remained in post-production as of March 2023. The film's world premiere took place at the Shanghai International Film Festival on June 2, 2023, where it was presented under the alternate English title Happiness to All. Its domestic Japanese theatrical release followed on January 12, 2024. The film's international streaming rollout came considerably later: Shudder made it available across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland on June 13, 2025. This staggered release path—from festival debut to national cinema to global streaming—gave the film a slow-burn audience build, allowing word of mouth and critical acclaim to accumulate over nearly two years before it reached a wide English-speaking audience. The journey from a competition-winning short to a festival-premiered feature to a streaming release mirrors the film's own patient, escalating dread.

Critical Acclaim and the Capitalism Parable

Critics responded to Best Wishes to All with strong approval. On Rotten Tomatoes, 77 percent of thirty collected reviews are positive, while Metacritic assigned a weighted score of 70 out of 100 based on four critics, landing in the generally favorable range. David Fear of Rolling Stone delivered perhaps the most effusive praise, declaring it the best Japanese horror film in decades and quite possibly the single best horror movie of the year, full stop. Zachary Lee at RogerEbert.com awarded three out of four stars, describing the film as unsettling and framing it as a modern parable about capitalist society, where contentment can only be achieved by exploiting others before being exploited oneself. Gregory Nussen at Slant Magazine likewise read the film as a pointed commentary on capitalism and what he called the epidemic of loneliness. The film's thematic resonances extend further, with connections drawn to concepts like the zero-sum game, the philosophical notion of Weltschmerz, and the parable The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.