Never After Dark: Japanese Horror Film Gets U.S. Theatrical Release This September

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Never After Dark movie poster
Some spirits don't want to cross over.

Japanese supernatural horror Never After Dark is heading to U.S. theaters this fall, bringing a haunted-house mystery centered on a medium who discovers that the spirit she has been called to confront may be connected to something much more personal.

Following its festival run and Japanese theatrical release earlier this year, Never After Dark will arrive in U.S. theaters on September 25, 2026, through Magnolia Pictures.

Even Stephen King has called it "amazing and haunting"

A Medium Walks Into a House That Should Have Stayed Empty

Airi, a wandering medium, makes a living helping restless spirits cross over, where her latest job takes her to an isolated country house where the owner claims that a male ghost appears at a specific time around midnight, but this is no routine haunting.

Airi encounters an apparition unlike anything she has dealt with before, where investigating the house gradually reveals a hidden secret, and the deeper she goes, the more the supernatural mystery begins to overlap with her own past, where she is also accompanied by the ghost of her older sister Miku, who died years earlier and remains connected to her through reflections and mirrors.

The result is a horror story where the central mystery isn't simply what is haunting the house, but why the entity is searching for something hidden inside it.

Dave Boyle Returns With His First Feature for SIGNAL181

Never After Dark marks the first feature film from SIGNAL181, the production company established by director Dave Boyle and actor-producer Kento Kaku- Boyle wrote and directed the film, while Kaku serves as a producer and also appears in the cast, and the movie reunites the pair after their work on the Netflix series House of Ninjas.

Boyle has spent much of his career moving between American and Japanese filmmaking, making Never After Dark an especially personal project rather than a conventional studio-produced J-horror assignment - the cast is led by Moeka Hoshi, walongside Kurumi Inagaki. Kento Kaku, Tae Kimura, Mutsuo Yoshioka and Bokuzo Masana round out the principal cast.

The film has also already had a substantial festival run before its U.S. theatrical release, where it premiered internationally through SXSW 2026, appeared at the Overlook Film Festival, before also playing at Fantasia 2026.

Trailer

The U.S. Release Is Set for September 25

The film will be released in U.S. theaters on September 25, 2026.


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