All you need to know about The World of Kanako is that it stars the great Kôji Yakusho. Best known in the United States as the oblivious father in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s globe-trotting Babel, he’s done his finest work in Japanese films, especially those of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, like the supernatural noir The Cure and the deeply strange psychological thriller Doppelgänger.
In Tetsuya Nakashima’s highly-stylized, blood-soaked procedural, he plays Akikazu Fujishima, a sweaty-faced detective turned security guard who lost his marriage to drink and drugs. Eight months after unknown assailants murder three people at a convenience store, his ex-wife calls to report that their daughter, Kanako, has gone missing…