AnyMart ★★★½

“Maybe it starts in places like that one,” muses a young girl on a date with convenience store clerk Sakai (Shota Sometani), who nervously asks what would start. 

“To flip over…”

At this point in Yusuke Iwasaki‘s debut feature it’s very clear what “flip over” means, frighteningly clear. A hallmark of consumerist comfort and streamlined service, the Japanese konbini (a combination of convenience store and 24/7) is the initial spark for social breakdown. A zombie apocalypse where the murderous horde isn’t actually dead, only reduced to a vegetative mental state by the stress of constant overworking, absurdist self-exploitation, and the sheer madness of perpetually polite customer care. As the dialogue goes: “Between living and not living there is not much difference anymore.” At least not if you work in a konbini like Iwasaki himself used to. 

As the son of a konbini owner, the director-writer knows all too well his desperately hopeful hero’s grueling routine. While Sakai’s father sits in the store’s dim backroom, eyes glued to the screen, the overzealous store manager tortures Sakai by constantly questioning his commitment and urging him to increase the revenue by reinvesting his salary by buying discounted konbini items. Such suggestions that are at the same time comically absurdist and depressingly real spike the scenario with sarcastic barbs. Sakai’s colleague, who saves expired food items from the trash can to save some money and prevent food waste, is fired for it.

Of course, she also has to pay for the sorted-out food. Just like the other colleague who keeps saying to customers “Thank you for your visit” instead of “Thank you, come again” has to pay, only in a gorier fashion. Sakai’s position behind the konbini counter serves as a vantage point for a demarcating look at the cruel circle of business life and the predictable patterns of consumer behavior. A hipster café selling French quiche opens across the street and soon people queue to eat there. A little while later and the hype is over, pushing the owner over the edge.

Also in a physical sense, as his suicidal jump has deadly consequences for another one of Sakai’s colleagues. Sometani gives a congenial performance as the well-intentioned employee whose idealism is continuously twisted and turned by a capitalist society. His father (Masahiko Nishimura) hardly notices him beyond his professional function. The interchangeable string of girls he dates in search of some genuine affection only represent different facets of media manipulation and materialism. Iwasaki’s experience as a prize-winning commercial director lends his feature film debut the slick style of a deranged advertisement, caricaturing the moral glorification of a self-destructive sense of diligence and employee obligation. 

With its dark humor and sudden outbursts of splatter, AnyMart is both unnervingly eerie and great fun. It is a clever critique of demoralizing dead-end jobs and dehumanizing work conditions, providing a privileged middle-class audience a gruesome glimpse into the everyday insanity of retail professions. A distinct color palette of white and red—coincidentally or not, the colors of the Japanese flag—gives his unique mix of surreal shocks and hilarious horror an aesthetic touch of brand design. Still, as the warning title says, the next konbini killing spree is potentially everywhere where individuality is only accepted as a promotional facade. AnyMart – anytime, anywhere.