There’s a new Japanese found-footage horror heading to DVD next month, and クニコからはじまる話 / A Story Beginning With Kuniko has a rather strange starting point – the film takes the infamous “Kuniko” footage from the 2015 Japanese horror documentary Shigazō (死画像) and builds an entire horror story around it.
Directed, written and edited by Hiroki Iwasawa, the filmmaker behind Honto ni Atta! Noroi no Video and Kidan Hyakumonogatari, the new film mixes mockumentary storytelling with multiple pieces of supposedly recovered footage, and it is due for release on DVD in Japan on October 2, 2026.
What Is A Story Beginning With Kuniko About?
The starting point is “Kuniko”, a piece of footage originally included in Shigazō in 2015 – the footage concerns a news report about the discovery of the body of a missing girl named Kuniko Oikawa, and as the report continues, the footage gradually becomes distorted and increasingly disturbing.
That original clip developed something of a cult following among Japanese horror fans, and it now forms the basis for the new film – a woman armed with a knife breaks into an office that produces paranormal documentaries, seriously injuring an employee, and her reason for doing it is even stranger – she believes that a particular videotape has to be returned to the correct location or humanity will be destroyed.
A research team then tracks down a man who had been spreading the conspiracy theory online, where he tells them that the videotape was previously submitted to Shigazō and supposedly contains footage even more frightening than Kuniko.
The official description calls the film a “non-linear” horror, with different pieces of frightening footage appearing irregularly before eventually connecting to one another.
The Japanese DVD is scheduled for October 2, 2026, with the release handled by Amumo98, where the disc has a listed runtime of 115 minutes and includes the trailer as a video extra – the film is already available through U-NEXT in Japan, while director Hiroki Iwasawa has indicated that other streaming services are expected to follow around the DVD release.
The cast includes Yuji Takao, Nanami Amagai, Hajime Akie, Saki Yumi, Hakutsuki Shiomi, Minami Miyakoshi and Kaho Fujii, among others – You can buy it here.
More Asian horror movie news.
- Erica – Japanese Psychological Horror Gets DVD Release in October
- The Origins of J-Horror Brings Six-Disc Collection of Japanese Horror to Blu-ray
- Tenement Gets Dark Sky Blu-ray Release This September
- The Sacred & The Cursed: Severin Brings Four Joko Anwar Horror Films Together in Huge Blu-ray
Collection - The Curse Gets Japanese DVD Release This October
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