Four individuals meet at a rural train station for their annual memorial of their loved ones who perished in the "Ark of Truth" incident--an event like the Aum Shinrikio attack on the Tokyo Subway. At first the audience assumes that they were victims of the cult, but it quickly becomes apparent that each of them was a cult member.

Through various events, they spend the night in a cabin with one of the few surviving cult members. In conversation and flashbacks, they try to make sense of what happened to their loved ones. There are a few twists along the way.

The result is a haunting film of beautiful images and understated performances. The film rarely says anything explicitly, much more is evoked in images, suggested in dialogue. When all the elements come together at the end, the result is almost overwhelming. I'm only sad that it has taken three years to get this film exhibited in the U.S.

At the beginning of the film the viewer learns that a Japanese suicide cult, the Ark of Truth, recently poisoned a community's water supply which lead to the deaths of over 120 people and the injury of over 8000. However, instead of meeting individuals who had family members who died from the attack or individuals hurt by the virus themselves, we are introduced to four people, three men and one woman, whose family members were the actual perpertrators. The perpetrators were killed and incinerated by their fellow member of the Ark of Truth after they poisoned the water supply.

Every year on the anniversary of the attack, these four individuals meet and pay their respects to their dead loved ones at a dock near the former home of the cult members. Also visiting the site is a man who was a member of the Ark of Truth, played by a very taciturn Asano Tadanobu, but who had run away before the poisoning. However, instead of a brief trip, the four friends are forced to stay at the old residence of the Ark members when theit vehicles are stolen. What follows are sad flasbacks of the foursome's loved ones cutting themselves off from their familes to join the Ark of Truth, and the former member's stories of the contentment the perpetrators found in their new religion, even if that religion asked them to kill the "unsaved".

This film will be much more poignant to individuals familiar with Asahara Shoko and the Aum Shinrikyou, the doomsday cult that bombed the Tokyo subways on March 20, 1995. The film goes into the motivations of why people join groups like the Ark of Truth,i.e. Aum, and it shows the suffering of family and friends who lose their loved ones to these groups.

As with "Afterlife" there is no soundtrack and the camera work is very dark. A good, but slow film.