I Watched AnyMart at 3 AM in a Berlin Airbnb—Now I Can’t Look at 7-Eleven Clerks the Same Way

I Watched AnyMart at 3 AM in a Berlin Airbnb—Now I Can’t Look at 7-Eleven Clerks the Same Way

I found this in the Berlinale Forum lineup after skipping three press screenings that looked like corporate horror—you know the type, where the villain is capitalism but the film itself is a slick product with a four-quadrant trailer. AnyMart had no trailer, no stills, just a logline that read: A convenience store clerk begins to suspect his coworkers are pod people. I booked the ticket before I could overthink it. What I didn’t expect: Iwasaki Yusuke doesn’t just suspect his coworkers are pod people; he proves it—using nothing more than a 4K camera, a 24-hour FamilyMart in Osaka, and a cast of unknowns who have clearly spent entire weekends trapped in fluorescent hell. The film isn’t just a horror-comedy; it’s a forensics report on how convenience stores manufacture conformity, one mandatory morning meeting at a time.

Iwasaki Yusuke worked the night shift at a Tokyo konbini while studying film. He clocked in at 10 PM, restocked expired onigiri, memorized the corporate chant (“Thank you for choosing AnyMart—we value your safety!”), and watched his coworkers morph into hollow shells of customer-service politeness. The script for AnyMart ($120K budget, shot in 18 days) was written during his lunch breaks—on the back of receipt tape, in between refilling the hot dog roller. > “I wasn’t making a metaphor. The store literally turns people into robots. The uniform, the scripted greetings, the way you’re told to stand in the ‘power position’ during stocktake—it’s all designed to erase personality. What happens when you strip away someone’s ability to say ‘no’? You get people who stop asking questions. And then you get monsters.”

The monsters in AnyMart don’t have fangs or glowing eyes; they fold shirts with terrifying precision. They recommend the 399-yen egg salad with the enthusiasm of a cult member. The horror isn’t in the supernatural—it’s in the way the protagonist, Kenta (played by Kuroda Koji, a former konbini worker himself), starts mirroring their behavior without realizing it. By act two, he’s chanting the store motto in his sleep. By act three, he’s volunteering to work overtime during a typhoon.

Here’s the genius of AnyMart: it weaponizes the mundane. There’s a scene where Kenta watches a coworker deactivate the store’s “Welcome chime” during a slow shift, and the silence that follows is more unsettling than any jump scare. The camera lingers on the flickering “Open 24 Hours” sign like it’s a dying star. Cinematographer Hara Yuki (who also shot One Cut of the Dead) treats the convenience store not as a set, but as a patient on an operating table—flayed open to reveal the nerves of late-stage capitalism. The comedy is just as surgical. A subplot involves the store’s “Employee of the Month” award, which is bestowed via an algorithm that tracks “customer satisfaction” (i.e., how many times you smile while handing over a bag of chips). The winner gets a gift card and a mandatory team dinner at a nearby izakaya—where the real horror begins when the staff realize none of them remember how to have fun. One character attempts to tell a joke; the punchline lands with the enthusiasm of a deflating balloon. The table falls silent. The camera holds. Someone’s phone buzzes with a work group chat notification. > “We had to rehearse the dinner scene for three days. Not because it was hard, but because the actors kept laughing. They couldn’t stop. It was like their bodies remembered how to be human, and it was painful.”

Iwasaki is careful not to vilify the workers; the real enemy is the system—the one that turns people into interchangeable parts, then punishes them for malfunctioning. There’s a heartbreaking moment where Kenta, desperate to feel something, steals a pack of gum. Not because he wants it, but because it’s the first impulse he’s had in weeks. The punishment? A write-up, a lecture about “company values,” and a team-building exercise where they all have to share their “personal mission statements.” The film’s climax—revealed here because I refuse to spoil the best part for you—hinges on a corporate retreat held in a windowless hotel conference room. The staff are told they’re there for “leadership training.” What follows is a Black Mirror episode directed by Mike Flanagan if he’d been raised on Tampopo and Office Space. The retreat leader (played by Yamamoto Maika, channeling the eerie charisma of Parasite’s Mrs. Park) begins with an icebreaker: “What’s your favorite AnyMart product?” The answers grow increasingly unhinged—“The microwaved corn dog at 3 AM.” “The fluorescent lighting in Aisle 5.”—until one employee finally snaps and screams, “I HATE THE SOUND THE CASH REGISTER MAKES!” The room erupts, not in laughter, but in recognition.

Horror-comedy often struggles to balance its tones; either the humor overpowers the horror or vice versa. AnyMart, however, navigates this challenge with ease, presenting a film that is both unsettling and darkly comedic.