The Big Picture

This Man
lacks a consistent tone, failing to evoke fear in the audience.
The film explores mental illness without providing nuanced commentary or adding depth.
The villain, reminiscent of Freddy Krueger, lacks the fear factor due to a silly appearance.

The A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is largely remembered for the demented, depraved, and deliriously comedic performance of Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger, the child-killing madman of teenagers’ dreams. So much so that it almost takes away from the series’ brutal concept. Leave out Freddy for a second and consider what is happening. Sleep, a place that is meant to bring you peace and allow you to recharge your mind and body becomes a hellscape of torment, and you must do whatever you can to avoid it, causing your mental state to become even more fragile. Sleep and mental health are deeply intertwined, making a villain who disrupts our slumber all the more destructive. These are the ideas that the Japanese horror movieThis Man attempts to explore.

The movie is based on the “This Man” hoax that occurred in the mid-2000s. Sociologist Andrea Natellacreated a website that attracted thousands of people who believed they all dreamt about the same man. It was all complete bullshit, of course. Yujiro Amano takes the concept and uses it to explore some pretty hefty issues. In the movie, an epidemic arises in Japan where people dream of a unibrowed man and within days, they are either murdered or appear to have committed suicide. The comparisons to the aforementioned iconic American horror franchise are apparent in concept but not in style. This Man may have some interesting ideas but it fumbles it in its lack of conviction and style. What this movie is really trying to say becomes less and less clear until the finale when there’s no meaning left.

This Man (2024) Based on the internet urban legend, This Man tells the story of a psychologist who discovers that multiple patients are having nightmares about the same mysterious man. As she investigates further, she uncovers a sinister and supernatural connection that puts her own life at risk.Director Tomojiro Amano Cast Arisa Deguchi , Minehiro Kinomoto Runtime 88 Minutes Writers Tomojiro Amano

What Is ‘This Man’ About?
This Man follows a multitude of characters and victims, but our protagonist is Hana (Arisa Deguchi), a baker who is happily married to Yoshio (Minehiro Kinomoto), with whom she has a daughter, Ai. Their middle-class life consists of breakfast, work, and cozy evenings as a family. All of this comes to a halt when they read news reports of a series of unexplained murders and apparent suicides, all linked to the victims’ psychiatric treatment and claims of dreaming about the very same man. This man has a dark unibrow and unnerving facial expression and all the deceased claimed to have been tormented by him in their dreams. Gradually, those closest to Hana start to dream of the man before dying. Some are murdered by absolute strangers who appear possessed and cannot remember the incident later. Hana’s best friend with OCD sees maggots in her food, compelling her to violently peel her skin away until she bleeds to death.

The deaths don’t slow down and the detectives aren’t any closer to solving it. When Hana dreams of the man, she takes matters into her own hands and tracks down a “sorcerer” where they learn It takes the sacrifice of a living soul to send this man back to Hell forever. She and Yoshio do whatever they can to rid their family of the curse, even transferring it to another person. However, this only brings more suffering to their family, and the tragedies pile up even more until it feels like all hope is lost.

‘This Man’ Has No Sense of Tone or Dread

There are many issues with This Man, but the one that becomes apparent first is that it does not follow any specific tone, thus creating no sense of urgency. It starts out as a saccharine love story as we see Hana and Yoshio frolicking in the woods and whispering sweet nothings in bed. Then we finally get to the good stuff and watch as a woman is being chased by an unseen force, before it cuts to her on the ground with her neck slit open. You think it’s going to be all Fincher from here, but the next scene is an excruciating conversation between the two detectives about whether they have a sweet tooth or not accompanied by the most drab elevator music you’ll ever hear.

Related ‘The Beast Within’ Review: Kit Harington Werewolf Horror Is All Bark, No Bite | Fantasia 2024 Kit Harington stars in this monster movie focused on a dark family secret.

The momentum of the murder storyline is punctured by needless, monotonous conversations between Hana and her younger sister that consist of five minutes of the sister complaining about her teachers with a 10-second aside about the murders. There’s no eerie, stomach-churning sense of dread that usually hides in the background of the happier, early scenes in horror movies. The first act is usually used to set up the peaceful, if not boring, lives of the characters to make the eventual invasion of a deadly, violent force all the more jarring. But here, it feels like the movie just needs to fill some time. When the film does decide to focus on the investigation, it’s through stilted conversations with a ton of exposition and choppy flashbacks or dream sequences straight out of a soap opera. The entire film starts to feel like a Halloween special of a soap opera like Home and Away.

‘This Man’ Doesn’t Have a Believable Villain
Image Via Hakuhodo DY MaP

I know earlier in the review I said to leave out Freddy, but let’s bring him back in. There’s a reason he’s one of the most recognizable figures in all of horror. He’s just downright terrifying. I’ll still never forget the first time I saw that manic, frenzied chase as he throws his blade-hands in the air with demented glee. This is all to say, if you want a frightening movie, you need a good villain. This Man’s vague, forgettable title starts to make sense when you see the titular character. He’s a short, unsuspecting man with a massive unibrow played by an actor with a noticeably shoddy balding wig. The makeup and hair penetrate any sense of believability as the man we’re all meant to fear looks like a bad Hollywood costume. There’s a recurring sound heard to suggest the man’s presence — his “menacing” laugh, which sounds the exact same as the cackle heard from Boo the Ghost in the Mario video games. Suffice it to say, this demon, spirit, madman, whatever you want to call him, has the power to kill millions, but he scares no one. With no dread-including tone and no real sense of threat, This Man doesn’t invoke any sense of fear in its audience.

Image Via Hakuhodo DY MaP

When we first hear of the details of the investigation, we learn that the first few victims were all seeking treatment for their mental health. The woman we see with a slit throat had anxiety and insomnia and was taking anti-depressants. Out of Hana’s best friends who are early victims, one is a psychiatrist and the other has OCD. You would think a movie about a killer preying on those with mental illness would have something nuanced, maybe even fresh to say about such an important topic… but it doesn’t. If anything, there seems to be an anti-pill sentiment to the movie (which is sort of ironic since the earlier scenes of the happy family look like they’ve been taken right out of a Lexapro commercial). Anti-depressants are mentioned, always in relation to someone who has just been subjected to a violent death. Later, the epidemic has become so widespread that people are willfully ending their lives before the man can come for them. We see numerous images of people taking a disconcertingly large amount of small white pills to end their lives.

The repeated imagery of pills in relation to death and despair sends out a somewhat concerning message. Anti-depressants and other medications are both life-changing and life-saving, yet This Man seems to flip this idea. While pills are a common mode of suicide across the world, this noticeable use of medication imagery to mean giving up plays into the movie’s larger issue of having nothing to add to the important topic at its core. You’re constantly waiting for the movie’s thesis on how to deal with mental illness to arise. The titular demon is surely meant to represent depression and anxiety, but the film does not explore the nuances of tackling such afflictions. It almost seems to say all you need is people around you. And while, yes, mental illness cannot be battled alone and one does require support from family and friends, professional help is just as important, and This Man skips over the bigger implications of these ideas.

Hereditary used a demon to offer an unflinching portrait of generational trauma while grief is turned into a boogeyman in The Babdook. This Man is sort of trying to do something similar, but the script is devoid of any complexities or nuances to elevate it to contain such thematic substance. The film is trying to sculpt a thesis on mental health out of an Internet hoax that gaslit people into fearing a Freddy Krueger-like madman who could creep into their nightmares. Not exactly a recipe for a sensitive conversation about a prevalent worldwide issue!

All in all, This Man fails in both its horror and its topics. One aspect of the movie is a serial killer detective plot. If you love the likes of Seven, The Silence of the Lambs, or the new Longlegs, I suggest sticking to rewatching them. The inconsistent tone and complete lack of fear or dread prevent This Man from even making you feel a bit uneasy as you’re watching. The villain himself is about as scary as a committed father on trick ‘r treating duties and, while there are a few moments of visceral gore, they fall to the wayside of this contrived story. And with mental health at the center, This Man fails its main topic by offering no real commentary on an important, universal issue.

REVIEW This Man (2024) This Man is a cross between A Nightmare on Elm Street and a straightforward detective story but with none of the style or substance to drive it forward.ProsThe film has what could be a promising premise. ConsThis Man doesn’t have any sense of tone, making it difficult for the audience to feel any fear for what is to come.The movie revolves around mental illness but makes no nuanced or honest commentary on the important topic.The central villain, a Freddy Krueger-type madman who haunts people’s dreams, is too silly in appearance to really fear.

This Man had its International Premiere at the 2024 Fantasia International Festival.