May 17, 2026 4:44pm PT

‘Sheep in the Box’ Review: Kore-eda’s Sweet but Limp Sci-Fi Fable About a 7-Year-Old AI Humanoid

It's the Japanese director's gentle version of a high-concept tech fairy tale. Except that it mostly just sits there.

Owen Gleiberman

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Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

@OwenGleiberman

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Courtesy of Neon

The Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda is not a filmmaker anyone would accuse of being Hollywood-adjacent. But his new movie, “Sheep in the Box,” takes off from an idea that sounds like pure high-concept Hollywood — or, in fact, several versions of that movie at once, all of them bad. It’s the story of an architect, Otone (played by the weirdly Sandra Dee-like Haruka Ayase), and her runty carpenter husband, Kensuke (Daigo), whose 7-year-old mop-haired son, Kakeru (Rimu Kuwaki), died two years ago in an accident. They’ve been suffering ever since, but then they’re approached by a company called REbirth that specializes in building generative AI humanoid replicas of lost loved ones. Before long, the couple welcomes into its home a replicant version of Kakeru, who looks and talks just like him. Problem solved! Or, in fact, problems just starting.

'Sheep in the Box' Review: Kore-eda's Sweet but Limp Sci-Fi Fable About a 7-Year-Old AI Humanoid