‘Best Wishes to All’: Home is where the horror is

Horror movies don’t have to make sense to be scary. When a ghost’s hand shoots up from murky bath water to grab the heroine’s wrist, your heart leaps even though a spook with a vise-like grip is impossible in reality.

Yuta Shimotsu’s first feature, ironically titled “Best Wishes to All,” delivers more than a jump scare or two. Based on a prize-winning short film and produced by horror maestro Takashi Shimizu, it is a plunge into a nightmarish world in which the bizarre and disturbing are accepted with a smile as ordinary and unavoidable.

While Shimotsu can create shocks from a gesture or glance without showy effects, he can’t quite fill the gaping holes in Rumi Kakuta’s script. The result is a film that strains to say something true about human nature, but its metaphorical reach exceeds its narrative grasp.