‘New Group’ Trailer Turns Conformity Into a Deranged Dance of Death Ahead of Shudder Debut
There are movie trailers that introduce a premise, and then there are trailers that appear determined to leave viewers wondering what exactly they just watched.
The new trailer for Yûta Shimotsu’s New Group firmly belongs to the latter.
Wild, confrontational and increasingly unhinged, the first look at Shimotsu’s body horror satire transforms conformity, groupthink and seemingly harmless gymnastics into something considerably more disturbing. Following its festival run, New Group will begin streaming on Shudder Nov. 6.
The film centers on Ai, a high school student whose ordinary world begins collapsing as a strange, cult-like mentality spreads through the people surrounding her. Individuality gives way to collective behavior, and what initially resembles simple synchronized exercise evolves into a nightmarish ritual capable of deadly consequences.
If that description sounds strange, the trailer makes it clear that New Group has little interest in containing that strangeness.
Bodies move together. Smiles become unsettling. Repetition turns threatening. The increasingly synchronized behavior of the group takes on the rhythm of both a social movement and an infection, with Shimotsu pushing familiar images of communal exercise into grotesque body-horror territory.
The result looks like social satire delivered at full volume.
Rather than positioning its threat as a traditional monster, New Group appears to find horror in the surrender of individual thought. The frightening element isn’t simply that people are joining the group — it’s how rapidly abnormal behavior can begin looking completely normal once enough people participate.
That gives the trailer’s over-the-top imagery something substantial underneath the madness. Collective identity, social pressure and the human desire to belong are exaggerated until conformity itself becomes physically dangerous.
And then there is the dancing.
What begins with simple gymnastics escalates into what can only reasonably be described as a dance of death, allowing Shimotsu to blur the boundary between choreographed movement and bodily nightmare. The trailer repeatedly pushes its performers into synchronized patterns that become more unnerving the longer they continue, creating the impression of individual bodies being absorbed into one larger organism.
Anna Yamada leads the cast alongside Yuzu Aoki, Ren Komai, Danhi Kinoshita, Arisa Sasaki, Kano Rogers, Jun Hosoi, Ryo Matsumoto, Tomomitsu Adachi, Natsuko Sakakura, Takashi Shimizu, Tomoya Maeno and Pierre Taki.
Shimotsu directed the film from a screenplay written with Momoko Sahara.
Born in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1990, Shimotsu initially studied mechanical engineering at Saga University before moving into commercials and short films. His 2020 short Dreaming to Accept Reality screened at multiple international film festivals and eventually became the foundation for his feature debut, Best Wishes to All.
That film established Shimotsu’s taste for taking recognizable social anxieties and pushing them toward increasingly bizarre genre territory. New Group, his second feature, appears ready to take that instinct even further.
The film has already traveled the festival circuit, including screenings at the Fantasia International Film Festival and Sitges Film Festival.
But the trailer suggests that describing New Group strictly as body horror may only tell part of the story. There are elements of cult horror, absurdist comedy, coming-of-age anxiety and social satire operating inside its increasingly manic presentation.
More importantly, it looks completely committed to the bit.
Nothing about the footage suggests a filmmaker interested in cautiously approaching the absurdity of his premise. Shimotsu appears to be running directly toward it, using increasingly outrageous images to ask what happens when belonging to the group stops being a choice and becomes an expectation.
The gymnastics may be synchronized.
The nightmare appears to be anything but.
New Group begins streaming Nov. 6 on Shudder.
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