‘Kefi’ Review: A Grief-Stricken Family Reunion Is Beset by Aliens, Drugs and Dinosaurs in Kisin Saito’s Kaleidoscopic, Genre-Fluid Debut

Nov 3, 2026 12:19am PT ‘Kefi’ Review: A Grief-Stricken Family Reunion Is Beset by Aliens, Drugs and Dinosaurs in Kisin Saito’s Kaleidoscopic, Genre-Fluid Debut

Riho Takada, Mari Iriki and Konatsu Kato play estranged siblings forced to face each other's wild personal lives in a visually and tonally chaotic feast of cinematic flair from the freshman writer-director.

By James Marsh

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James Marsh

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• Comments

Late on in “Kefi,” one of its central protagonists — the youngest of three sisters — justifies a spontaneous hook-up with a random stranger by claiming that “the flow” of their chance encounter “was really cinematic.” The same, perhaps, can be said for Kisin Saito’s brazenly confident debut feature as a whole — a genre-fluid kaleidoscope of styles and storylines that frequently skirts the border of incoherence, only to right itself time and again thanks to the filmmaker’s assured command of cinematic aesthetics.

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