Five FrightFest Facts with Jirô Nagae Director of ‘The Convenience Store’

Not every horror story begins in a haunted house or a dark forest. Sometimes it starts under fluorescent lights, behind a checkout counter, during the quiet hours of a night shift. That everyday unease sits at the heart of The Convenience Store, director Jirô Nagae’s live-action adaptation of the cult indie horror game from Chilla’s Art, which makes its international premiere today at FrightFest Glasgow.

The original game became a streaming phenomenon thanks to its unnerving atmosphere and deceptively simple premise. A young woman working alone at a late-night convenience store begins to notice things that don’t quite add up. Doors slide open when nobody is there, customers linger a little too long, and an unexpected delivery sets off a chain of events that quickly turns the mundane into something deeply unsettling. Nagae, a filmmaker already well known to Japanese horror fans through works such as Kisaragi Station, saw the cinematic potential immediately and spent years hoping to bring the story to life on screen.

Now realised as a feature film produced by NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan, The Convenience Store expands the eerie world of the game while preserving its distinctive brand of slow-burn dread. Ahead of today’s screening at FrightFest Glasgow, we spoke with Nagae for a round of Five FrightFest Facts to discuss his journey into filmmaking, the horror movies he’d love to see on the festival’s big screen, and the type of award he believes should celebrate horror that is as entertaining as it is frightening.

Five FrightFest Facts with Jirô Nagae Director of ‘The Convinience Store’

Tell us about your film

This film is a live-action adaptation of The Convenience Store, a highly acclaimed horror game produced by the indie studio Chilla’s Art in 2020. When the game was first released, I played it myself and was immediately struck by how compelling the convenience store setting was as a backdrop for horror. I also felt that its style of horror direction strongly resonated with me. From that time on, I had hoped to bring it to life as a live-action film.

Three years later, that wish was realized through a horror project developed by NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan and Canter, allowing us to finally adapt the game into a live-action feature.

How did you get into making movies?

I was raised by parents who loved movies, so I grew up watching films from an early age. I was particularly captivated by Hollywood films from the 1980s and 1990s, and by the time I was in junior high school, I had already decided that I wanted to become a film director.

While at university, I attended the Osaka Scenario Center to study screenwriting. After graduating, I worked for about two years in Osaka as an assistant director on variety television programs. I then moved to Tokyo and began working as an assistant director in film, which had long been my dream.

During that period, I had the opportunity to study under my mentors, directors Kotaro Terauchi, Atsushi Muroga, and Toshiyuki Morioka. In 2010, I made my directorial debut with 2 Channel no Noroi: The Movie.

What films would you love to see screened at FrightFest and why?

I apologize for the self-promotion (laughs), but I would choose my own film, Resort Baito.

It is not a traditional J-horror film, and I would love for audiences to discover that Japan also produces this kind of highly entertaining horror. I hope it helps broaden the perception of what Japanese horror can be.

If you could create your own award to give at FrightFest, what would it be and why?

I would create the “Entertainment Horror Award.”

Although it would remain within the horror genre, this award would recognize films that are filled with a strong spirit of entertainment and that genuinely delight audiences. One of my goals as a filmmaker is to create horror films that can even be enjoyed by people who usually find horror difficult to watch.

If your life was made into a horror film, what would it be called and who would play the starring role?

Title: Japanese Horror Story
Lead Actor: Yuya Yagira

Video game adaptations continue to grow in ambition and scope, but The Convenience Store demonstrates that horror doesn’t need spectacle to get under the skin. By grounding its scares in a familiar setting and gradually letting the tension creep in, the film taps into a universal fear: the sense that something is wrong in a place that should feel completely normal.

For Nagae, whose love of cinema stretches back to childhood movie nights, the film represents another step in a career dedicated to delivering atmospheric horror that audiences can enjoy together. And with FrightFest crowds always ready to embrace something new, The Convenience Store offers exactly the kind of chilling late-night experience the festival thrives on.

The Convenience Store trailer