Film Trailer for Shiro Maeda’s Ikiteru mono wa inai no ka

Here is the trailer for the film version of Shiro Meada‘s Ikiteru mono wa inai no ka (Isn’t anyone alive?)

The 2007 play finally won Maeda the Kishida Kunio Award in 2008 after many nominations, and was revived in 2009 in a double-bill with its sequel, Ikiteru mono ka (Are we alive?). It famously depicts a university campus where the students start inexplicably (and comically) to die, one by one. (The follow-up was, literally, a play in reverse, with the dead rising and then going through their scenes backwards.)

(Confusing, the Japan Foundation’s website uses a different English title, No One alive here?, though the official one agreed by Maeda is Isn’t anyone alive?.)

It will be particularly interesting to see if the absurdity of the original — which is highly theatrical — translates well. The trailer seems to suggest the film will be wider than the play’s setting, with scenes of ominous empty trains and (CGI) planes dropping dramatically out of the sky. Hopefully it hasn’t been turned into a zombie film!