Honored as an "emerging master" four years ago at the Seattle International Film Festival, Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) is one of the world's most prolific filmmakers. Now nearing 50, he's completed more than two dozen Japanese features, including such distinctively creepy thrillers as "Cure," "Séance" and "Pulse."

Although he's never enjoyed the commercial success of such similar Japanese shockers as "The Ring," his films continue to pop up here at art houses, on DVD and on the Sundance Channel. The latest to get a theatrical run is "Bright Future," a moody, apocalyptic 2003 tale about two young factory workers who become close friends.

To put it mildly, they don't appear to have much in common, aside from the ability to provoke each other. Nimura Yuji (Joe Ogadiri) is a sleepy-eyed couch potato. Arita Mamoru (Tadanobu Asano) is mysterious and defiant, fond of making vague threats and delivering ultimatums — and shoving Yuji around.

Eventually Mamoru ends up in jail, but not before giving Yuji his favorite pet: a poisonous jellyfish that slips through the floorboards, escapes into a river and swims into the vulnerable suburbs of Tokyo. This premeditated disaster doesn't appear to cause Mamoru the slightest remorse, nor does the bloody crime that lands him in jail.

"I just kind of did it," he explains.

That perverted sense of pride appears to be his strongest motivation. Or maybe not. He remains an enigma, rather like the Columbine-inspired teenage assassins in Gus Van Sant's "Elephant." Almost as much of a question mark is Yuji, who initially resists Mamoru's attempts to manipulate him, then goes out of his way to help him.

When he visited the Seattle festival in 2001, Kurosawa said he was drawn to "average" people who end up committing a crime; he is especially interested in "how they end up crossing that line inadvertently." His films consciously avoid the clear-cut endings of Western movies, embracing the idea that evil is not easily quashed and continues after the end of a story.

Certainly the finale of "Bright Future" offers little consolation. The movie gradually establishes a sense of foreboding that is hard to shake, though it's not without its darkly humorous moments. There's just something inherently funny about a gang of glowing, multiplying jellyfish threatening to take over Tokyo.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com