Re/Member: The Last Night 2025 Movie Review Trailer

 The only consolation one might take from the Re/Member films is that Hasumi seems to be having a blast. He appears indifferent to coherence or restraint, doing exactly what he wants at every turn.

The Re/Member films are a curious case. They aspire to be a slasher, a supernatural horror film, a school drama, and a teen romance, all at once. All these genre elements are crammed into a brisk 90- to 100-minute runtime. The shifts between modes are often abrupt, and this incoherence is, in fact, the defining characteristic of both films. Director Eiichiro Hasumi assembles a group of high school students and unleashes a monster called the Red Person to kill them one by one. These teenagers are trapped in a time loop, forced to participate in a deadly game called "Body Search."

Director: Eiichirô Hasumi
Writers: Yûki Hara, Atsumi Tsuchi

The name is self-explanatory, but to clarify: participants must gather the dismembered remains of a victim and place them in a coffin if they want to break the vicious cycle and end the relentless killing spree.

However, Re/Member and its sequel, Re/Member: The Last Night, make it clear that the game never truly ends. The reassembled body simply resets the board: new victims, new iterations, and a new unholy killer. The Last Night picks up where its predecessor left off and immediately separates Takahiro (Gordon Maeda) from Asuka (Kanna Hashimoto). The 2022 film bid the couple farewell with a happy ending, as Takahiro regained his memory. Here, however, Asuka essentially evaporates from the mortal realm and slips into another dimension. In the real world, a newspaper article mysteriously changes, revealing that Asuka died years earlier, as a child, at an amusement park. And so, Takahiro sets out to find her, re-entering the loop, this time with a new group of characters, three years later.

How exactly does Takahiro re-enter the loop? Don't ask. The only logic The Last Night adheres to is "improvising as you go." Initially, we're told that breaking a Red Stone will end the curse. Later, the rules change: Takahiro must smear his blood on a fragment of the stone to activate a "final" loop, one that promises permanent freedom if the body parts are successfully returned to the coffin. Other absurd developments follow, but cataloging them seems pointless. The filmmakers simply ramp up the chaos when necessary, and that's how we end up watching the characters fight the Red Person atop a roller coaster.

And then there are the names: Red Person, Red Stone, Body Record, Place of Origin, Origin Ritual. The crude literalness is almost funny. The film feels like it was made by someone with no interest in narrative subtlety. Even the title invites confusion. Does Re/Member seek to evoke "dismemberment" or does it refer to the act of remembering what happened in the loop? Ask Hasumi, and he'll probably just shrug and say, "Do whatever you want."

And yet, Hasumi fails to deliver the pleasures of enjoyable trash cinema. He can be praised for his sweeping tonal shifts—the constant genre-switching—but little is gained by excess. Comedy undermines horror, horror overwhelms teen romance, gore interrupts melodrama, and supernatural nonsense negates any emotional sincerity. Everything clashes; nothing is coherent. As each element undermines the other, we're left without a stable register to connect with, nothing to maintain our immersion.

The only consolation one might take from the Re/Member films is that Hasumi seems to be having a blast. He seems indifferent to consistency and moderation, doing exactly what he wants at all times. Good for him. I wish the public could share that unfiltered enthusiasm.

Watch Re/Member: The Last Night 2025 Movie Trailer