The best horror movie of the year so far is a Japanese NFT
The release date on a new Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie should be an internationally recognized holiday for film fans, particularly for horror die-hards. Chime, the latest from the Japanese director of Cure and Pulse,warrants that kind of celebration. It’s terrifying, beautifully made, and one of the highlights of 2024 so far, no matter the genre. The only problem is that most people don’t know the movie exists, or don’t know they can watch it, because it’s only available through a somewhat complicated, NFT-inflected process.
Chime is currently rentable through the Japanese digital video trading platform Roadstead.io. Digital video trading, or DVT, as Roadstead’s site calls it, is sort of an evolution of NFTs. A certain number of copies of a movie are made available to purchase, and then the purchasers can do whatever they want with them, including renting them out to other users at whatever price point they decide on.
Chime seems to be Roadstead’s only movie so far, and thankfully, it’s easy enough to rent, though you’ll have to jump through a few hoops, starting with making an account on Roadstead’s site. From there, you head to Chime’s rental page — which I can’t actually figure out how to access without a direct link or a Google search.
Once you click the “Rental” button, you can select which user’s copy of the movie you’d like to rent. The prices vary from copy to copy, and they’re available for a variable number of days as well. For example, one copy might cost $4.50 for a one-day rental, while another owner offers a $10 rental that lasts a week. Once you’ve selected a price and length, you can rent the movie, so long as you have a card that can be used internationally, as the site currently only accepts payment in yen. But after all that, the movie’s right there in your “assets” tab to watch for as long as you’ve got it rented.
The good news is that Chime is more than worth jumping through all these hoops for.
The movie follows a former chef named Matsuoka who
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