JP Nunez
I went into this year’s edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival with a list of movies I was dying to see, but if you know anything about how these events work, you know that we rarely get to see our most anticipated films first. We have to take what we can get when we can get it, so the first screener I watched was a new J-horror movie called This Man. I didn’t know a ton about it, but I’m a big fan of J-horror, so I decided to give it a shot. I figured the film would be pretty good, but I wasn’t prepared for the hard-hitting emotional gut-punch it would deliver.
This Man was written and directed by Tomojiro Amano, and it stars Arisa Deguchi and Minehiro Kinomoto. In the movie, bodies start piling up across the city in a string of unexplainable deaths (both suicides and homicides), and these cases all have two things in common: the victims suffered from some sort of psychiatric condition, and they dreamed about the same mysterious man before dying.
It’s a baffling head-scratcher that completely stumps the police, but for a woman named Hana, it quickly becomes personal. This curse soon begins to affect the people in her life, and when she turns to a local sorcerer for help, the situation takes some unexpectedly dark twists and turns.
For about the first half of its runtime, This Man is all about the mystery behind this alarming string of deaths, and it’s intriguing as hell. As more and more people fall victim to the curse, you can’t help but wonder who or what is behind it all, and as the affliction inches closer to Hana and her family, it feels like a cinematic vise that slowly but steadily increases its grip without ever letting go.
You’ll want her to escape its deadly clutches, but nobody—not you, not Hana, and not anybody around her—knows how she can evade this seemingly inevitable fate. It’s the kind of slow, creeping threat that makes films like Ringu (and its American remake, The Ring), It Follows, and Smile work so well, and it’s executed almost perfectly here too.
The convincing lead performances will make you care about Hana and the people she loves, and when the horror comes to the fore, it’s quite creepy. This Man shows us a few of the dreams people have about the mysterious figure, and every single one of them has the potential to send a small chill down your spine.
On top of that, This Man also has some pretty effective gore. Granted, the movie is by no means soaked in blood, but it has its moments. Most notably, there’s a harrowing scene involving a vegetable peeler, and unless you’re completely stone-hearted, it’ll probably make you cringe at least a little bit (in a good way!).
Then, once we reach the halfway point, This Man changes gears. The focus switches from the mystery behind these deaths to the magnitude of the curse, and it gets dark. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that this second half is almost depressing. It will break your heart into a million pieces, and two scenes in particular are almost guaranteed to stick with you long after the credits begin to roll.
One of them involves a tragedy you’ll probably be able to see from a mile away, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful. The other one involves a bucket, and when I realized what was happening, I literally screamed “No!” at my TV. Scenes like these make for some nearly traumatizing emotional horror, but it’s not all doom and gloom.
In the midst of this death and despair, This Man also gives us a couple of genuinely touching moments to counterbalance the darkness. Most notably, there’s a scene where Hana’s husband proves his love for her in a moving way, and there’s also a moment that uses the horror of this story to remind us to make the most of the short time we have on this earth.
All that being said, I have to acknowledge that This Man also has some very noticeable flaws. For instance, the first half introduces its characters in a somewhat haphazard way, so it sometimes feels like the movie is just throwing random people at you. Granted, it eventually comes together quite nicely, but the road there is a bit rocky at times.
Even more egregious, the end of the film isn’t nearly as good as everything leading up to it. I’m obviously not going to spoil anything, but I will say that it’s the kind of conclusion the people behind How It Should Have Ended would have a field day with.
But thankfully, those two problems aren’t nearly enough to ruin the entire experience. This Man is still a great watch from beginning to end, so I highly recommend that you keep an eye out for this movie. It combines the killer mystery of films like Cure and Longlegs, the creeping inevitability of Ringu and It Follows, and the harsh gloom of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and the result is something that wears its influences on its sleeve while also feeling fresh and new. It was a great way to kick off this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, and I can’t wait to see what other gems the festival has in store for me.
This Man played at Fantasia on July 25.
