HOMUNCULUS

ホムンクルス

By Takashi SHIMIZU

AVEX PICTURES, INC. - as SALES World / DISTR Theatrical / PROD

Science-fiction - Completed 2021


    • Year of production
    • 2021
    • Genres
    • Science-fiction, Drama, Thriller
    • Countries
    • JAPAN
    • Languages
    • JAPANESE
    • Duration
    • 115 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Takashi SHIMIZU
    • Synopsis
    • Trepanation is the procedure of drilling a hole in the skull. It is said to increase the blood circulation and improve pressure inside the skull. It is also said to bring out a person's sixth sense, the ability to use ESP, see ghosts, move objects with one's mind. This is speculative fiction based on the concept of trepanation.
      Susumu Nakoshi is a 34-year-old homeless man living out of his car. For two weeks, he declines his fellow homeless men's invitations to set up a tent with them, preferring to sleep in his car. One day he is accosted by a strange-looking man searching for participants to subject themselves to trepanation. Nakoshi tells the man to leave, and discards the flier the man placed on his windshield. However, when his car is towed, he agrees to let medical student Manabu Itoh drill a hole in his skull in exchange for 700,000 yen. Itoh claims to be interested in trepanation for the sake of science; he is interested in humans, fascinated with ESP and the sixth sense, and wants to disprove the existence of the occult. Itoh's father owns a lab facility, as his father is a rich hospital director. Itoh performs the trepanation surgery on Nakoshi and does a variety of ESP tests. When Nakoshi reveals that he sees distorted humans when using only the left side of his body, Itoh researches and discovers that Nakoshi can see homunculi.
      Itoh explains psychoanalytic theory to Nakoshi after the yakuza incident.