Canary

After a suicide cult stages a terrorist attack, one member’s son (Ishida) hits the road with a teen runaway (Tanimura) to find his missing sister. Using the Aum group’s 1995 Tokyo-subway incident as a starting point, Akihiko Shiota’s drama delves into the damaged-goods mind-set of youngsters who survive such extreme environments (rendered in harrowing, horrific flashbacks) yet can’t integrate back into normal society. It lacks the punch of Shiota’s previous explorations of traumatized teen spirits—Moonlight Whispers (1999) and Harmful Insect (2001)—but the film still leaves bruises in all the right places.