Here’s Why You Should Watch Netflix’s New Japanese Thriller, Burn The House Down
Netflix might be known for its mostly US-centric shows, but recently the streaming giant has been branching out to foreign language projects to bring some of the best talent worldwide to our screens.
Films like Bird Box Barcelona and series like The Glory and Lupin have attracted cult followings of fans, and there’s genuinely a great variety of non-English language content. That’s why we’re excited to see the Japanese thriller Burn the House Down, based on the manga series of the same name, drop on the site.
What’s Burn the House Down about?
Burn the House Down’s plot, as the name suggests, quite literally revolves around the burning down of a house in the opening minutes of the first episode. As a young child, our lead character Anzu (Mei Nagano) watches from a crowd of people as the beloved home she grew up in goes up in flames, and is burnt to the ground. The incident impacts her for life: not only does she lose her possessions and toys, but her family is put under so much strain that it falls apart.
Her mother (Michiko Kichise) develops a form of amnesia, and her father (Mitsuhiro Oikawa) divorces and marries a different woman, Makiko (Kyoka Suzuki), who was there on the night of the house fire.
Now, thirteen years later, Anzu gets a job working for Makiko as a housekeeper but uses a pseudonym so that she doesn’t notice. Makiko is living in the same house that burnt down, having been restored, and Anzu, using the name Shizuka Yamauchi, is determined to find the truth of the incident all those years ago.
Anzu was told as a child that her mother had started the fire by accident by leaving the stove on but has grown to become cynical of this claim. She believes her family was targeted, her house deliberately destroyed, and her mother was vilified.
Across the eight episodes of Burn the House Down, Anzu seeks her own revenge and retribution against whoever was responsible for destroying her childhood and family. But of course, nothing is entirely simple or as it seems, and as she gets further into her amateur investigation, Anzu discovers that she might not want to know the truth after all.
Watch the trailer
The official trailer for the series begins, sure enough, with a shot of the house burning down, and the young, timid-looking Anzu is shown growing into a determined and steely-eyed young adult. The trailer also shows that she doesn’t feel that she can trust her father, whom she hasn’t seen in years, and that several people are out to stop her investigation.
When can I watch it?
Burn the House Down debuted on 13th July, and you can watch all eight episodes of this intriguing Japanese drama now on Netflix.
