What New Group is about — and why it gets under your skin
New Group is a 2026 Japanese horror film directed by Yûta Shimotsu, and its premise is deceptively simple: students at one high school start freezing on all fours while classmates climb onto them, stacking themselves into human pyramids that grow, spread, and eventually overrun an entire town. At the center of it all is Ai, an easily influenced girl who hasn't quite figured out who she is yet, and Yu, a transfer student who arrived already knowing she doesn't want to be like everyone else. Together they watch their community surrender to something that looks, from the outside, almost ritualistic — and the film doesn't rush to explain it. That ambiguity is the point.
How New Group came together — production, festival run, and the team behind it
New Group is the second feature film from writer-director Yûta Shimotsu, and it arrives backed by a four-studio consortium: Gemini Films, KADOKAWA, Movie Walker, and Sasaki kogyo. KADOKAWA in particular carries real weight in Japanese genre cinema — it's the same company behind a substantial chunk of the country's manga, anime, and horror output — so its involvement here signals that New Group wasn't a fringe passion project. It had institutional support.
Shimotsu's first feature already demonstrated a willingness to work outside conventional horror grammar, and New Group pushes that further. The film runs a tight 82 minutes, which is a deliberate choice: there's no fat, no padding, no subplot that wanders off and never returns. Audience critic Brent Marchant, writing about the film's themes, observed that in an age where asserting independence has become something of a personal liability, it's refreshing to see a work that goes so far as to celebrate individuality as an act of resistance. That framing — horror as celebration, not just dread — is what separates Shimotsu's approach from a lot of what's currently in the genre.
As the Chicago International Film Festival's official listing confirms, New Group screened on the festival circuit before any wide release, which tracks with its positioning as a thoughtful, awards-adjacent horror title rather than a pure commercial product. No Rotten Tomatoes aggregate or Metacritic score has been published yet — it's genuinely too early for that data to exist — and box-office figures from a theatrical run haven't been widely documented. Hard to say if that changes once streaming availability widens, but the festival pedigree alone gives it credibility.
The film is in Japanese, which matters for how Western audiences will encounter it. Subtitles are the only option, and that's fine — J-horror has always traveled well across language barriers, from Ringu onward.
Why New Group works as both horror and social commentary
What's striking is how New Group manages to be genuinely frightening without relying on the usual machinery of the genre. No jump scares to speak of. The horror here is slower and more sociological — it's the horror of watching a crowd do something inexplicable and realizing you're the only one who finds it inexplicable. That specific dread, the fear of being the last sane person in the room, is something Shimotsu exploits with real craft.
The human pyramid imagery is doing a lot of work. On one level it's absurdist body horror — people literally using other people as furniture, as architecture. On another level it's a pretty direct metaphor for hierarchical systems, for the way fascist structures (and the film is explicit that a self-styled fascist leadership aligns itself with the formations) require people at the bottom to stay still and bear weight so others can rise. The film doesn't hammer this point. It lets you arrive at it yourself, which is the smarter move.
Ai's arc is the emotional engine. She's not a hero in any traditional sense — she's someone who has spent her whole life trying to fit in, and the film takes that seriously rather than treating it as a character flaw to be overcome in act three. Yu, the transfer student, functions almost as an externalized conscience, someone who can see the pyramid phenomenon clearly because she hasn't been conditioned by the same social pressures. Their dynamic is the film's most human element, and both performances ground what could otherwise tip into pure allegory.
One scene in particular — Ai watching a pyramid form in the school courtyard, her body visibly leaning toward joining before she catches herself — lands with more weight than most horror films manage in their entire third acts.
Where to stream New Group online
New Group is currently available on major OTT services, making it accessible to horror fans who missed its festival run. Movie OTT tracks streaming availability across platforms in real time, so if you want to know exactly where New Group is live right now — and whether that changes by region — the Where-to-Watch widget at the top of this page is the fastest way to check. Movie OTT aggregates this kind of cross-platform data so you don't have to hunt through individual apps manually.
Given the film's festival positioning and its backing from KADOKAWA, a company with established streaming relationships across Asian and international platforms, availability is likely to grow over 2026. Worth bookmarking the movieott.com listing for this title if you're in a region where it hasn't landed yet.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Where can I watch New Group?
As of now, New Group is available on major OTT services. The Where-to-Watch widget at the top of this Movie OTT page shows current platform availability by region, updated in real time.
Q: Who directed New Group, and is this his first film?
New Group is directed by Yûta Shimotsu — it's his second feature film, not his first. His debut already marked him as a filmmaker with an unconventional approach to genre storytelling, and New Group builds on that reputation.
Q: Did New Group screen at any film festivals before its release?
Yes. According to the Chicago International Film Festival, New Group screened on the festival circuit ahead of any wide commercial release. No major aggregator scores (Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic) have been published yet.
Q: Is New Group in English or Japanese?
The film is in Japanese with subtitles for international audiences. It runs 82 minutes and was produced by a consortium including KADOKAWA, one of Japan's largest media companies.
Q: What production companies made New Group?
The film was produced by four companies working in collaboration: Gemini Films, KADOKAWA, Movie Walker, and Sasaki kogyo. KADOKAWA's involvement in particular signals the project had significant institutional backing within the Japanese entertainment industry.
Final thoughts on New Group — who should watch it
New Group isn't for everyone. It's patient, it's strange, and it asks you to sit with discomfort rather than resolving it cleanly. But for viewers who want horror that actually means something — that uses genre machinery to say something real about power, conformity, and the cost of going along — this is exactly the kind of film worth 82 minutes of your time. Shimotsu has made something genuinely odd and genuinely smart. Don't sleep on it.