Senritsu kaiki world kowasugi 2023

After a seven year gap, Koji Shiraishi brings the Kudo Gang back for a new entry in the Senritsu Kaiki File found footage/mockumentary series.  This time the gang is older and wiser - Shiraishi is no longer named as the cameraman character (though he’s still the one shooting), Kudo isn’t quite so “punch first, question later”, and best of all Ichikawa is not taking Kudo’s shit any longer: instead she’s the one with the deadly punch and she’s quick to put him in his place when he gets out of hand.  In fact much of the early part of the film is the gang and the youths they are helping trying to make Kudo more woke, and I loved that - but that also makes this a bad place to start for series newcomers.  Go back and start with the earlier entries to see how much the characters and director have grown.

But on the bad side, this really did feel like a retread, just kind of reliving some of the hits of earlier entries with more of a contemporary feel.  The idiots making a TikTok video of something supernatural they shouldn’t, the video rewinds to something you missed, the psychic helper (actually you get two this time), the time and space loops - it’s all fun at first to go through a