[FrightFest Glasgow '26] FILM REVIEW: The Convenience Store

The Convenience Store - FrightFest Glasgow International Premiere Review

Director: Jirô Nagae

Starring: Kotona Minami, Terunoske Takezai, Tetta Seki, Shunsuke Tanaka, Makoto Sakomoto, Atsuto Sakuari

Written by: Chillas Art

Synopsis:

A college girl working the night shift at a local convenience store begins to notice strange things happening around the store.

Thoughts:

In recent years there seems to be a surge in adaptations of video games onto the big screen, particularly within the horror genre. Last year saw the release of 'Until Dawn' as well as a sequel to the highly popular 'Five Nights At Freddy's'. This trend doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon as the release of 'Return to Silent Hill' and Zach Cregger, fresh from his success with 'Weapons' is attempting to breathe new life into the 'Resident Evil' series with his take on the legendary series. Although they tend to miss more than hit by being too reverential to their source material or by being rushed and shoddily put together to make money off their IP, they still have their audience. One of the latest films within this sub-genre is based on the Indie Japanese video game, 'The Convenience Store'. 

The film follows Yukino Tazuru (Kotona Minami), a college student who works the night shift at a convenience store where not everything is as it seems. Upon a disturbing discovery she gets drawn into a supernatural mystery that starts to have an adverse effect on not just her but the people around her. 

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It starts just like a video game where we experience the start of Yukino's shift at the titular convenience store. Although there is an air of familiarity to it there is also a sense of unease and the uncanny through the atmospheric sound design and the luminal lighting. It almost feels like the slightest of distortions to reality giving it a slightly surreal flavour. Whenever she interacts with her co-worker his actions and reactions make him seem like a NPC with his unusual movements and speech patterns. It all feels like a live action opening level to a video game making you question whether there is much validity in making this adaptation, as it comes across as being like a cut scene. From here it switches to something more conventional as a pair of detectives investigate the discovery of a dead body at the store. Jirô Nagae's background in television comes to the fore here as it is shot just like a procedural show which helps to ground the film in a sense of reality before veering off into supernatural territory. 

Nagae handles this aspect of the film as the slow movements of the camera draws the viewer in before delivering some fairly effective jump scares thanks again to the great sound design of the film. He utilises the iconography of J Horror like the image of a ghostly child or a woman with long hair disguising their disturbing features quite well even though they are overdone within the genre. The main issue with this though is that it becomes quite repetitive (especially in the second half of the film) meaning that a lot of these types of scares lose their impact as the film progresses. 

It is told as a disjointed narrative from the perspectives of Yukino and then the detective investigating the murder of her boss in the store. At first it feels like you are playing the same level again whenever the perspective shifts from one character to another adding to the feeling of repetition. This is still prevalent when they both bump into the same characters (only through slightly different scenarios) but soon the mystery unravels coming together quite nicely in the final moments of the film leaving the audience with a somewhat bleak ending. The exposition behind it though is derivative and the story leading up to this point isn't that engaging. The characters come across as being quite flat as Nagae's focus on the film seems to be in creating a ghostly atmosphere (which they succeed at) over a story which requires more meat on its bones. 

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Having never played the game that the film was based on, I had no idea of what to expect with 'The Convenience Store' beyond its premise. Despite my lack of knowledge about it I can still tell that fans of the video game or those who enjoy these types of games will be left satisfied with what Jirô Nagae delivers here. On a film level, whilst it may be repetitive in its structure and delivery it still manages to be quite chilling, delivering a sense of unease in spades (I for one won't forget the creepy old woman with the walker for days to come). It may not be the best horror video game adaptation but it is still a solid effort. 

Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

-Joseph McElroy

'The Convenience Store' received its International Premiere at FrightFest Glasgow on March 7th 2026.