Cutting through his fans’ buzzing reactions, subscriber Izumi (Kiko Mizuhara) leaves a voice comment with a proposition: Carter should come to Japan, where she can help him sell the jeans in the country’s busy vintage denim market. The pair soon grow close as they FaceTime ahead of their meeting in Tokyo, but Izumi has ulterior motives, planning to steal the jeans with her shady boyfriend, Hiro (Nijirô Murakami), and pay off his debt to the yakuza by selling them to eccentric boss Egoda (Hio Miyazawa), who we meet wearing a denim kimono. But there’s another layer of intrigue, because this sale just happens to coincide with the return of an embittered, exiled yakuza named Ko (Pierre Taki), who wants revenge on Egoda.

Like Spree, Kotlyarenko’s breakout horror flick with Joe Keery as a livestreaming serial killer, Vintage Violence is a high-octane ride for the doomscrolling generation, and here the director has turned the overstimulating reality of our digital era into a breathless, multi-screen visual language that dials up the suspense. With the plot paper-thin and unabashedly messy, it wouldn’t be wrong to call Kotlyarenko’s split-screen antics a gimmick, but this is a case where style is the substance. Every phone, computer, or security camera screen — blended with the “real-world” footage captured by Good Time DP Sean Price Williams — articulates the hybrid chaos of our tech-addicted reality. The most interesting feat here is that Kotlyarenk lets the practical rhythms of that reality fuel the thriller set pieces, like a scene in which Carter chases his stolen phone with a single AirPod in his ear, cutting in and out as he gets warmer or colder.