Hirokazu Kore-eda brings his customary warmth and generosity of spirit to the seemingly cold presence of GenAI in our lives in Sheep in the Box (Hako no naka no hitsuji), in which grieving parents hope to ease their pain by embracing a humanoid built in their dead son’s image. The Japanese director has no shortage of ideas — chief among them the potential for advanced robotics to bring closure to the bereaved. But too few of those ideas yield satisfying conclusions, resulting in a drama that becomes treacly and insubstantial, reaching for a profundity that remains elusive.
Family dynamics have frequently been at the heart of Kore-eda’s films, invariably distinguished by his exceptional direction of children. Something of a motif in his work is the resilience and resourcefulness of kids, which continues here with a robot that outgrows the need for his adoptive parents, just as flesh-and-blood children do when it’s time to seek independence. But these and other thematic threads lack both definition and emotional heft, making the movie feel flimsy, especially considering its two-hours-plus run time.
Sheep in the Box
The Bottom Line
Beautifully made but thematically woolly.
