User reviews

Warning: this is not the cortical homunculus with big hand and lip.

A new Japanese movie on Netflix that adapted from the manga with the same name. A homeless amnesiac got his forehead drilled, which allowed him to use his brain more and see into people's inner trauma.

I didn't know about the manga, so the review is based solely on what I saw. The first half was very interesting, as the main character explored his newly discovered ability. That one scene with the high school girl was so weird and mind-boggling. This first half got me invested to see how far the main character would take his ability.

The second half made a sudden change in tone, and became mystery and drama. I had major issue with this story because things did not have explanations, the buildup did not address the character's background, and the story itself didn't even make that much sense. This second half might improve a little bit of there was more impactful background music. Honestly the second half story wasn't that intriguing.

Also, the premise that if one drills a hole into the brain, and somehow this makes more space for the brain to be used more, was just stupid. This reminded my of Lucy, a movie with Scarlett Johansson where the main character got injected some weird blue stuff and was able to use more than 10% of her brain. At least that makes more sense than the premise of this movie. And the 10% brain usage is a stupid myth.

Overall, an interesting story about guilt and trauma, but the second half became convoluted and messy. 5/10.

Definitely not a movie for everyone unless you are interested in psychology and the outcome of a personal trauma.

The movie is well acted as much very complicated, the characters reveal themselves along as you are able to understand them.

It takes a lot of attention, and every detail count; my advice is.. Watch it.. Only if you are ready for a puzzled full mind fantasy movie.

I saw this in the Commin soon section on Netflix and the synopsis was interresting enough so I went and read the manga first. I came back to this movie today and not gonna lie - I am dissapointed. Im not that kind of person who always says manga is better but in this case its like two completely different stories. Unfortunatelly this movie doesnt do the manga justice at all and even if Im judging it as a movie of its own, its just OK in my opinion.

First, this story would be better told in a series - I feel we needed more time to spend with the characters to learn about their inner motivation. The movie is almost 2 hours long and still it feels like its rushed. At the same time, some scenes are really dragging. I like slow-paced movies but in this case the long scenes didnt add anything to the movie itself.

I like the atmosphere, the visual effects (I was really sceptical about the CGI but it was Ok - still I think it would be better translated in animated medium) and the actors for the most part. The music was just not captivating enough, some scenes would benefit from more suspenseful, more haunting score.

Now lets talk about the changes in the story and characters. I understand that making creative changes in the story is neccesary and many times its for the better. I always welcome this creative aproach from directors and even if I sometimes prefer the original, I can still appreciate it. In the case of this movie, I cant say that. Im going to be honest, I didnt like any of it. It was all so rushed I didnt conect to any of the characters so I just ended up not carring about them. The explanations of their homonculi were rushed, shallow and the connection between them and the main character wasnt established good enough. But what was the most dissapointing for me personally was Manabu Ito. I loooved this character in manga. They were mysterious and enchanting, you werent sure what to expect of them. Were they just a curious young medic or was there something more behind their experiment? Did they perform the trepanation or did they just manipulate Nakoshi? Were they even a real person or just Nakoshi´s imagination? And when you learn why was their homonculus the way it was, you felt heartbroken. It all made sense. You get nothing like that in this movie. Here, he´s just a weirdo with too much free time on his hands. The ending of his arc in the movie is unsatisfying and tbh it didnt really make sense to me (maybe I missed something?).

The ending as whole is just a mess. Even if I dont compare it with the manga, its still just....meh?

I have so much more to say but its a bit hard for me to explain myself in english so Im just going to end it here. I dont regret watching it but I probably wouldnt recomend it to my friends.

Please, read the manga, its so good.

As others have mentioned, this new effort from JU-ON director Takashi Shimizu starts off on a very strong and original footing that reminded me more than a little of the cult classic R100. I do love the way that fantastical elements are brought into play to depict abstract concepts and the psychological background of trauma and the like is absolutely fascinating. Love the creative scenes too, like the Yakuza set-piece. Sadly this loses its way in the second half and becomes smaller scaled and long-winded; half an hour off would have helped that. But the ending is pretty decent and the acting great.

Well starting from the Manga, it is way a hard piece to adapt, mostly because of his complexity and exploration of the human psyque, in this movie all the interesting charts between the charachters are just empty and as I said before that complexity is lost with this movie. It is not as deep as it should, but good try.

Fantasy film/drama from Japan. A truly unique and authentic central idea, the projection of the "homunculus", an ancient theory of the birth/origin of every human being. Only here, the term essentially means the inner fears and wounds that everyone hides. With a micro-intervention in the skull, a new experimenter on the limits of science and madness tries to unlock the brain's ability to develop more senses and be able to see the projected homunculuses. One of his humans-volunteers/experimentations will be a homeless man who has lost his memory. An interesting scenario with revelations about the past and the lost memory of the homeless man and plot twists in the end, accompanied by quite good effects. However, the whole way of presenting this particular idea was quite childish and with some not-so-moral elements (e.g. Prostitution of underage schoolgirls, which for them may be considered something not a big deal, almost normal). Huge idea with very nice central script, but totally childish execution... Too bad because it could be a huge movie just like the idea. In Asia, Korean cinema is much better overall, if it came out in Korea, it would have been a much more serious film I think. Still worth a watch for the concept.

Horrible movie! The whole movie is pretty dull and trying to force acting some comic book plots which turned out to be quite bizarre and awkward.

It's full of cliché and misogynist plot. The main character practically raped a teenage girl but portrayed in the movie as practicing a kind of exorcism on the demon in her mind.... straight-up chauvinist, twisted heroism! Seriously, WTF.

Got tricked by the trailer with cool CGI thought we would see different kinds of peculiar spirits (the homunculus), turned out the trailer already showed everything. It's more like a shallow, twisted self-searching journey. Regret watching it.

I enjoyed this movie, it was definitely different to say the least. I never got why everyone kept drilling into each others brain. But I did enjoy the story. It felt a bit drawn out at times I wish it could have been faster. I recommend seeing it and passing your own judgement. Cannot wait to see Ito in another movie, I loved his character the most. Even crazy he was still very much on the attractive side.

I found the movie to be an accurate adaptation of the manga, but from what I can tell by these reviews, the movie is harder to enjoy independent of the source material. I think its easier to read graphic scenes than to watch them with real actors. While the manga is a good psychological tale that I would recommend to readers interested in that kind of thing, the movie feels like it goes a little far despite being a faithful adaptation. I don't know if this is anyones fault in particular, just something I picked up on. If the premise is interesting to you I suggest reading it instead.

Ok, so i'm not an avid manga reader, but - i do binge on it once in a while. Homunculus was one that blew me away. I wanted to read something else an author of my favorite manga "Ichi the killer" - Hideo Yamamoto wrote and that's how i found Homunculus. And boy it did not disappoint. I'd say it's a must read. The art is a masterpiece, the story is engaging, the characters are flawed and interesting. I loved it. So when i saw the movie on Netflix i was really excited, yet cautious. Live action movies rarely (if ever?) adapt manga properly. Anime is way better at doing it. So - i watched the movie... It's weird. The first half is kind of alight - it has pretty much similar plot and characters as the manga, although acting and execution is meh. The second part of the movie is where it completely goes of the rails and becomes it's own thing. So it's deceitful to even call it by the same name as the manga. The movie on it's own is pretty worthless. The plot is lame and barely makes any sense. So i guess the main reason why manga readers are upset is that the movie and the manga has almost nothing in common.

Just read the manga. The manga is way better than the movie, there are more things that were explained in the manga. And also the adaptation is just bad, they did most of the characters dirty. Again, read the manga. I would read the movie 2 just because the Nakoshi (main character) looked good.

Something must have been lost in translation, surely, as most of the characters in this film react in a way that is inconsistent to what people would do in a Western culture. You have a homeless person who acts all high and mighty when someone proposes shifty things for money, a medical student who is so annoying and arrogant yet no one kicks his ass, two women who just submit themselves when faced with minimal physical restraining and all kinds of extreme reactions to simple words uttered randomly by other people. One girl is practically raped as therapy (now you understand where the term comes from), then wound sucking and blood kissing followed.

The story itself combines the concept of homunculus with Jungian psychology, dodgy medical experiments that make no sense and parapsychology, but doesn't go anywhere.

There some interesting things in the plot, though. The idea that one particular trauma, that we probably don't (or won't) even remember defines so much of our persona that just nibbling away at it would unravel a person. They could have gone with that a lot, but instead the film wastes too much on exposition, then hurries over the interesting part, then ends in a convoluted and pointless ending. I understand it's an adaptation from a manga, but there is no rule that forces following it exactly.

Bottom line: a weird concept with some interesting details, but a poor cinematic implementation and I can only assume some bad translation as well.

This just his Netflix and I turned it in expecting to read the English subtitles, but it was dubbed in English. Very interesting movie, kept my attention well throughout, except for 1 brief moment where the storyline slowed down, but it didn't last long. Good ending, I really hate when movies end without wrapping things up- but they did nicely- but quite unpredictable.

Definitely worth watching! 👀

I was very excited upon hearing about the adaptation from Netflix, but after finishing the whole movie, I felt as if there was no point in watching it at all.

Although the movie was rather slowly paced in the first hour, there was barely anything that makes you care about any of the characters. Themes and plot points that are supposed to be deeply thought about are forgotten minutes later. The movie picks up a little after the halfway mark, but sadly, the little plot is unable to do much for the rest of the film and the ending is unsatisfactory in the bad way.

Overall, it just feels static. It was capable of doing something interesting, especially given the tone of its origin, so why was the end result so uninteresting? Please use the almost 2-hour runtime to read the manga instead. I'm begging you.

People only giving it decent reviews because of the manga. If you haven't read it you won't understand anything that's going on or care about any of the characters. The acting was the only good thing about this one.

I had never heard about this 2021 Japanese mystery thriller titled "Homunculus" before stumbling upon it by random chance whilst perusing the catalogue of movies on Netflix. And I have to say that the synopsis for the movie sounded rather interesting. And the fact that it was a Japanese movie that I hadn't already seen certainly also helped convince me to sit down and spend 115 minutes on watching what director Takashi Shimizu had to deliver.

Writers Eisuke Naitô, Naruki Matsuhisa and Takashi Shimizu had managed to put together an interesting concept idea, I will say that much. However, the transition from script to screen just didn't prove all that thrilling. And the movie was ultimately somewhat disappointing, I have to admit that much.

The narrative throughout the 115 minutes was rather boring, and it was rather difficult to remain seating and watching the movie, because there wasn't really all that much going on.

The acting performances in director Takashi Shimizu's "Homunculus" was actually good, and the leading actor actually was the driving force that the movie above water and made it somewhat bearable to sit through the prolonged narrative.

The effects in the movie were somewhat cringeworthy and sort of dragged the movie down a couple of notches in overall enjoyment.

"Homunculus" was ultimately a rather forgettable movie, and definitely not a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time.

My rating of "Homunculus" lands on generous four out of ten stars.

Unlike the manga ( which I enjoyed and loved ) this movie was ridiculously adapted. They even changed the whole story to fit in 2 hours long but it has so much details.. it would be better if they made it a series or even an Anime!

I saw this because I was curious about it but turned to be disappointed I was looking for something like the manga at least.. what a shame! :( The ending , the protagonist's and Itou's backstory was different from the manga I hate this :/ I was expecting something at least similar to the original story!!

Anyways I gave this a 5 coz I liked Itou here he was prettier than the manga hehehe.