It’s so rare when the works of a filmmaker become a genre unto themselves.

While for devotees of master filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda (like I admittedly am) Sheep In The Box may fall in the lesser category of his works but it’s still innately fascinating as it takes us to the awkward core and reactions that are born out of grief.

In the not-so-distant future, a grieving couple who has lost their son takes into their lives a humanoid with the same appearance and voice as their late child.

Yeah, a near future story about a family’s grief does sound like a bummer on paper but what a Sheep In The Box does here is actually quite fascinating.  There’s a core of insight and ultimately hope in humanity that never loses focus in this story, even when the narrative occasionally loses that exact same focus.

Kore-eda is really a master at effortlessly taking a piece out of any genre that he damn well pleases and making it into something that is undeniably humanistic.  While he rarely hits his audiences over the head with gobs of exposition, he never really needs to because his stories are always born out of a place of respect for his audiences.

With a subject matter like grief and dealing with the death of a child it would be so easy to play it out in broad melodramatic strokes that are designed to engender some kind of emotional response.  Rather these characters act like human beings, imperfectly but never unnecessarily dramatic.

Working once again with star Haruka Ayase (who we saw previously in 2015’s Our Little Sister) as the grieving mother holding on to the memory of her child, we get taken on a journey of what is ultimately emotional self-discovery as this film really does a subtle job of showing us where the stages of grief can take us.

Occasionally it’s a little too subtle, but that ultimately harkens back to the Kore-eda style of allowing whatever genre he is working with come back around to the totality of the human experience, letting his actors do the work and give us something that’s more of a natural expression of grief, even while existing in the near future sci-fi trappings of the story.

Ultimately, Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of those filmmakers who are never boring and with Sheep In The Box we get to explore the more practical realities of holding on to your grief while never getting lost in the potentially distracting emotional flourishes that the emotion can unleash on people.