Ice Blood, or ๆฐท่ก (Hyoketsu), takes a family away from the noise of the city and puts them in a snowy rural area, where the sort of peaceful fresh start they were hoping for very quickly starts going wrong – and when I say snowy, I mean properly snowy – the whole film seems to be built around this cold, isolated white landscape where it becomes increasingly difficult to tell what is actually happening and what is coming from the family themselves.
The story follows Minoru and Yuki, who move with their young son Akira to Minoru’s family home in a heavy-snow region, where they are expecting a quieter life, but Minoru’s father Shigeru, who has dementia, reacts strangely to Yuki, repeatedly calling out the name of his dead wife and showing an almost inexplicable fear of her.And then Shigeru dies in a way that is described as being completely abnormal.
So, yeah, that peaceful new life isn’t exactly working out.
This Is Eisuke Naito’s New Horror
Ice Blood is directed and co-written by Eisuke Naito, who horror fans might recognise from films including Liverleaf, The Crone and Higuma!! The Killer Bear, and Naito seems like a very good fit for this material because Ice Blood isn’t really selling itself as a big supernatural spectacle either, as the horror appears to come from the gradual breakdown of this family and the increasingly strange things happening around them, with the snow and isolation doing a lot of the work.
The title is also pretty good – Ice Blood sounds cold, obviously, but there is something dark about putting those two words together, because blood is one of those things that immediately makes you think of something warm and physical, whereas everything in this film looks frozen and lifeless.
The Japanese title Hyoketsu literally carries that same cold feeling, and the film has also been marketed internationally as Blood on Snow.
Trailer
Hiromitsu Kitayama Makes His Horror Return
The film stars Hiromitsu Kitayama as Minoru, alongside Chihiro Kato as Yuki, Aoto Yamatani, Aimi Satsukawa, Rila Fukushima, Satoshi Watanabe and Shiro Sano, and this is Kitayama’s first starring role in a horror film in seven years, and the production is specifically being promoted around his return to the genre.
Then there is Chihiro Kato, who previously performed as Cent Chihiro Chittiii, including as a member of BiSH, and is taking on a completely different sort of role here, and while she has also been involved in acting before, but this is another example of the film putting performers into a much darker environment than their more familiar work.
And Shiro Sano is always useful to have lurking around a Japanese horror film because he has that face where you can never quite tell whether his character is going to help you or make everything approximately 400 times worse.
The Snowy Setting
One thing I like about the setup is that the snow isn’t just there because somebody thought a white background would look good on a poster – the family is basically trapped by it, the house is surrounded by snow, the outside world becomes increasingly distant and the whole place has this shut-off feeling where getting away isn’t as simple as getting in a car and driving home.
That gives Ice Blood a slightly different flavour from a lot of Japanese horror, as there is still the possibility of a traditional spirit story underneath everything, but the environment itself also becomes part of the threat.
And the film is apparently drawing on the yuki-onna, or Snow Woman, tradition in Japanese folklore, where the mysterious white presence described in the film has obvious connections to that long-running Japanese supernatural figure, although the film appears to be doing its own thing with the idea rather than simply making another straightforward Snow Woman movie.
Hidetoshi Shinomiya, who shot Drive My Car, serves as director here too, which also makes a lot of sense when you see how much emphasis there is on the landscape and the contrast between the white snow outside and the increasingly horrible things happening inside the house.
It could very easily have just been another โfamily moves somewhere creepyโ horror film, but the visual side seems to be taking the setting seriously – the snow gives everything this almost beautiful appearance while the family is falling apart underneath it.
That’s always a good combination in horror – make the place look beautiful and then ruin it.
The Family Is Where Things Get Really Uncomfortable
The supernatural stuff is obviously important, but the family relationships seem to be doing just as much work – Shigeru’s reaction to Yuki is particularly strange because dementia gives you an immediate uncertainty about whether he is seeing something that isn’t there, remembering something from his past, or actually recognising something that the rest of the family can’t see.
Then you’ve got the dead wife, the strange drawings, the damaged baby photograph and the growing suggestion that this house has a history nobody has properly dealt with – sounds about right for Japanese horror.
Ice Blood was released theatrically in Japan on July 3, 2026, distributed by Showgate, with a runtime of approximately 98 minutes.
Check out these other Japanese horror movies too.
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