Tomojiro Amano’s This Man was easily another one of my most anticipated films of the fest with its blurb promising an eerie folk horror narrative, by way of an eclectic mix of J-horror and eastern horror. This description was complemented with a still that showed some kind of surreal super horror hybrid. What I got was something much different, and I am not mad at all.
The film’s plot reads like a horror version of Dream Scenario. We have a group of people in Japan who all see the same grotesque man in their dreams, who looks like the real life Japanese offspring of Bert and Ernie. Soon after their nightmare they are either murdered by someone, or they just start coughing up blood till they die on the spot. The film’s primary focus is on a family of three who ignore this strange urban legend, that is until the wife sees the man in her dreams one night. This causes the husband to seek out answers from a sorcerer who was recently kicked out of the sorcery union, who attempts to help them.
The plot here sounds pretty solid, and if it would have been if they kept the scope small like most J-horror films, but soon the film goes into this bizarre nihilistic downward spiral as we have 10,000 dying from “Bernie” night terrors and 10,000 people a day killing themselves to avoid him. The ridiculous part is they say only 1 human sacrifice is all they would need to end this madness, but not one of those probably 100,000 who have died in that third act, would die to save their country.
The Tommy Wiseau comparison comes in, because as I watched the film I started to notice some things that felt way too familiar. Overlit scenes that were punctuated by background music that was just a little bit too loud, along with acting that definitely felt a bit overly melodramatic and forced. The editing style here is also that weird stream of conscious editing that you’d recognize from The Room, where the scenes just keep going. The flourish is when the director needs a transitionary pause, he cuts to this shot of these clouds over and over again for some odd reason.
So it’s more of a stylistic and narrative comparison, rather than to say this film is just bad, because it’s not, it’s downright entertaining.
The scene that locked me into this comparison, was early on and between the father of the family and a detective investigating the deaths. Both men are coded hetero in the film and happen to meet in the gym. They then go on to have one of the most uncomfortable dialog exchanges I’ve seen committed to camera in a long time:
Who talks like that who’s not in a Tommy Wiseau movie? I don’t know if the translation was off but this kind of off putting exchange tends to happen whenever one character interacts with another. It’s brilliant, awkward and cringe-inducing all at the same time.That and the character who everyone is terrified of is downright laughable, whenever he is on screen he doesn’t exactly invoke dread, more like who approved this makeup and why the hell is he peeling carrots? Also we are supposed to know it’s a dream because they cue the smoke machine every time. Seriously I need to see this again with a packed like minded audience at midnight where it should just shred.
Detective: You often come here?
Father: Yes, to improve my strength.
Detective: Live nearby?
Father: Five minutes on foot.
Detective: You have a great body.
Father: Not at all.
Detective: What do you do?
Father: I’m in IT. Sitting at a desk all day so I need to exercise.
What do you do?
Detective: I am a detective.
Father: No wonder you ask so many questions.
Detective: Wanna spar?
This Man is honestly the kind of film I can’t wait to inflict on others. From the insane setup, the stilted overacting, the bizarre antagonist, to the gory and bizarre ending that comes out of nowhere, it’s just all types of what the hell and I loved it. This Man is the kind of film that you really have to be in the right mindset going in, and once I recognized that I was having the time of my life. This Man is a bizarre mess of a film that needs to be seen to be believed, and that needs a cult following ASAP.
