IAI has a pretty nasty idea at its centre – after her father dies, Kana returns to her childhood home to look after her sick mother, expecting grief, family problems and the usual uncomfortable business of going back to somewhere you thought you’d left behind.
Then she starts noticing things that don’t make sense, and her sister Anri gets a warning that makes the whole situation considerably worse – Kana and their mother may be cursing people to death, and Anri’s child could be next.
When a Family Secret Gets Very Dark
Kana initially seems to be dealing with something fairly ordinary – her father has died, her mother is ill, and she’s returned home to take care of her. But a month later, when Anri visits her, she immediately notices that something isn’t right, so Kana tells her sister to keep her children away from the house.
Then comes the really horrible bit.
Kana reveals that she and their mother have been cursing people to death, and Anri naturally doesn’t believe her, I mean, it’s a fairly difficult thing to casually drop into a family conversation, but strange events start to begin happening, and the more Anri tries to understand what Kana is talking about, the harder it becomes to dismiss it as some sort of breakdown or bizarre family secret, and the possibility that her own child could become the next target turns the situation into something much more personal.
And that is where IAI starts playing with the idea of whether a curse is something that happens to people, or something people can unknowingly pass on themselves.
Trailer
Zenzo Sakai Takes a Different Route Into Horror
IAI (Legacy of Love), also known as 遺愛, is directed by Zenzo Sakai, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Keisuke Miyazaki – the film was produced through DrunkenBird, with Tokyo TV, Rights Cube and others involved in the production, and Rights Cube handling Japanese distribution – it runs for approximately 90 minutes and opened in Japanese cinemas on 19 June 2026.
The cast is led by Rio Yamashita as Kana, with Ann Ogawa, Kyoko Fujii, Saori Seto, Anan Sekiguchi, Kanata Ichino, Kaho Kojima and Makita Sports also appearing.
There is a particularly interesting name behind the project too – Tokio Omori, the TV Tokyo producer known for developing unusual horror projects, is credited as the film’s planning producer, and the official production material describes the film as taking a new perspective and fresh interpretation of fear and curses, rather than simply returning to the familiar victim-versus-ghost formula.
And it actually premiered internationally before its Japanese theatrical release, screening at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and subsequently being selected for other international genre festivals, including Porto.
The Curse Isn’t Quite What You Think
This is where IAI gets a bit more interesting than the basic synopsis suggests I think, as the official international description specifically says that modern horror is increasingly concerned not only with being victimised, but with the question “Am I hurting someone?”.
That is a pretty different starting point from the usual J-horror setup where somebody discovers that they’ve been cursed and spends the rest of the movie trying to survive it, so the film uses the curse as a way of getting into paranoia, anxiety and fear, with the family itself becoming the source of uncertainty.
That makes the mother-daughter relationship particularly important – Kana has returned home to care for her mother, something that initially looks like an act of responsibility and affection, but the more she becomes aware of what is happening, the more that relationship starts looking sinister.
A Modern Japanese Curse Story
There is also a deliberate attempt here to move away from the old idea that horror has to be about a person being attacked by some external supernatural force – the official production description talks about the internet, social media, information overload and anonymous human relationships as modern sources of fear, asking whether the danger is necessarily something coming after us or whether we might actually be capable of causing harm ourselves.
That gives IAI a more contemporary psychological angle, even though the basic ingredients – curses, family secrets, strange behaviour and a potentially supernatural threat – are very familiar territory for Japanese horror.
And at 90 minutes, there isn’t much room for the film to spend ages explaining everything, so it can get into the family situation, start planting doubts about Kana and her mother, and let the audience work out what the hell is going on alongside Anri.
This Could Get Properly Uncomfortable
What I like about the setup is that the horror doesn’t depend on somebody making the stupid decision to wander into an abandoned building at 2am – these are family members, with children involved, and and the filmmakers also seem to be deliberately interested in that uncomfortable space between love and a curse – rather than treating those ideas as complete opposites, he official material even describes the central question as whether what we’re seeing is love or a curse?
Check out these other Japanese horror movies too.
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