Best Wishes to All


Best Wishes to All is a 2023 Japanese horror film directed by Yûta Shimotsu, based on his award-winning 2022 short film of the same name.

Premise

A young nursing student with a kind heart visits her grandparents' home in the countryside, where she makes a disturbing discovery and learns that one's own happiness necessitates the suffering of someone else.

Cast

  • Masashi Arifuku
  • Kotone Furukawa
  • Aine Hara
  • Yoshiko Inuyama
  • Kôya Matsudai
All characters are unnamed.

Production

Best Wishes to All is based on the 2022 short film of the same name, which won the Grand Prize at the inaugural Japan Horror Film Competition. The feature film was shot in 2022 and was in post-production as of March 2023.

Release

Best Wishes to All had its world premiere at the Shanghai International Film Festival on June 2, 2023, where it played under the title Happiness to All. It was released in Japan on January 12, 2024. The film was released on Shudder in the US, UK and Ireland on June 13, 2025.

Reception

In a glowing Rolling Stone review, David Fear called Best Wishes to All "the best Japanese horror movie in decades, and quite possibly the single best horror movie you’ll see this year, period." Zachary Lee, writing for RogerEbert.com, gave the film 3 stars out of 4, calling it "unsettling" and "a modern parable for our capitalistic society, where our only hope for achieving contentment is to exploit before we’re exploited." Gregory Nussen, writing for Slant Magazine, likewise interprets the film as a commentary on capitalism as well as on the "epidemic of loneliness."