‘Transcending Dimensions’ Review: A Dazzling Convergence Of Genres [FrightFest 2025]
Toshiaki Toyoda’s Transcending Dimensions delights in sampling a range of genre premises and symbols for the ninety minutes we spend in its company. The initial set-up is simple enough: an ascetic monk, Rosuke (Yôsuke Kubozuka), goes missing from the unorthodox temple overseen by an erratic, cultish sorcerer Ajari (Chihara Jr.), drawing his lover Nonoka (Haruka Imô) and a hired assassin Shinno (Ryûhei Matsuda) into the boundaries of Ajari’s dangerous influence.
What starts as a stripped-back, noir-tinged mission into enemy territory soon shifts into an eccentric cosmic fantasy, splitting our time between remote religious facilities and futuristic laboratories, with Toyoda returning to motifs of severed fingers and ceremonial conch shells whenever we are tipped into new astral territory. Often connecting these segments are long, unbroken shots of journeys through tunnels, along outdoor paths, or through the depths of space, paired with the arresting, entrancing sounds of jazz band Sons of Kemet. Transcending Dimensions is a particularly sensory film from one of Japan’s most striking and compelling 21st-century filmmakers, structuring its bizarre and slight story from a pool of pulp, sci-fi, and fantasy influences while turning to an arsenal of visual and sonic tools in order to simulate eye-boggling transcendence.
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Transcending Dimensions is more in tune with Toyoda’s recent, shorter genre work (The Day of Destruction, Wolf’s Calling), but his most celebrated films from the turn of the century have a rich vein of humanity and much clearer emotional arcs. In Blue Spring, a clique of high school men double down on deep angsts and foster violent, self-destructive grudges against their closest friends; in the Odyssey-like 9 Souls, a band of prisoners escape incineration and one by one confront the difficulty of being accepted back into their old lives.
A clever sense of humor and a playfulness with genre conventions run through Toyoda’s whole career, but watching the wilfully unplaceable Transcending Dimensions, it doesn’t feel like Toyoda wants to pull us into his characters’ inner worlds as compellingly as his earlier, exhilarating dramas. The film assumes that we get the gist of what these supporting characters contribute to the story and doesn’t elaborate. A hired gun, a religious maniac, and in one instance, a ghost are interesting because they’re placed opposite one another within the confines of the same narrative, and not because Toyoda has written them as particularly compelling on their own merits.
The only interiority that Toyoda is interested in here is a spiritual one. He doesn’t want to focus on his characters’ psychology or backstory, but rather their metaphysical potential, whether or not they’ll unlock a power to transport them across the borders of life, death, and reality. Toyoda’s philosophizing blends the astral existentialism of 2001 (or, if we’re feeling cheeky, Zardoz) with a mundane religious intensity. There are plenty of reflections on our proximity to dead souls and reincarnation, but the melting pot of spiritual reflections is compelling as a pretext to let Toyoda experiment with fantastical atmosphere and absurd character comedy.
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Mileage will vary on whether or not this is enough. But Toyoda remains an excellent craftsman, drawing out unease and curiosity with long takes, push-ins, and well-pitched, heightened performances that make Transcending Dimensions as watchable as it is. Some visual tricks offer an obvious, immediate pleasure—like a mirrored, crystalline corridor in an alien realm that we spend an immersive, disorientating stretch of time trapped in, or the underpass where a Rosuke dispatches lab henchmen using galling body horror projections.
But Toyoda’s instincts serve him well in quieter moments. Early on (before things reach their wacky peak), his quiet hitman Shinno loads a revolver one bullet at a time, and is shocked to see his final round has been replaced by a severed finger (an act of mutilation favored by Ajari). Toyoda cuts from the extreme close-up to a wider shot that confirms the finger was a figment of Shinno’s imagination, but the shot continues for several seconds to make us ponder the implications of this hallucination. Can we spot indecision and fear in Shinno’s placid expression?
Plenty happens in Transcending Dimensions, but the busier plotting of the film’s first half suggests a more robust resolution than Toyoda is willing to give us. Instead, we are treated to escalating sequences of esoteric chaos, with promises of massive, magical confrontations climaxing in a sudden, single burst of violence. A convincingly intimate dialogue scene between the film’s two estranged lovers hints at unrealized emotions that Transcending Dimensions is unwilling to explore too vigorously, but the sheer pleasure of what Toyoda offers discourages a heavy critique of the film’s ultimate shallowness. A romp built from the spare parts of pulp mysteries and genre excess, Transcending Dimensions works hard to keep us engaged as it unfurls a sizzle reel of pastiche, philosophy, and phantasmagoria.
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Transcending Dimensions
Summary
A romp built from the spare parts of pulp mysteries and genre excess, Transcending Dimensions works hard to keep us engaged as it unfurls a sizzle reel of pastiche, philosophy, and phantasmagoria.
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