The Big Picture

The Contestant
is a harrowing exploration of a bizarre Japanese reality show that feels more like a horror movie.
The documentary humanizes protagonist Nasubi with a tone that is haunting yet hopeful.
The film glosses over pivotal years in Nasubi’s life and the broader impact of reality TV shows.

Can you draw a straight line between a Japanese reality show from 1998 in which a naked man attempts to live solely off of magazine sweepstakes prizes and your young nephew watching a Mr. Beast YouTube video where the ultra-popular creator spends a week buried alive? The Contestant makes a strong case for it. It’s s a compelling documentary in the way that true crime podcasts or car crashes are. You know you’re witnessing something awful, but you simply can’t look away.

The Contestant Run Time 1 hr 30 min Director Clair Titley Release Date September 8, 2023 Actors Tomoaki Hamatsu, Toshio Tsuchiya, Fred Armisen

What is ‘The Contestant’ About?

Before Big Brother, Fear Factor, and even The Truman Show, there was Susunu! Denpa Shōnen, a popular early Japanese reality show that cast relatively unknown comedians to complete wild mystery tasks. It was a real starmaker, having the power to catapult its participants to fame overnight. However, no situation was more outlandish than a segment called “A Life in Prizes,” and no contestant got more attention than Nasubi.

It all started with an audition of sorts, with a man named Nasubi being selected by random draw. He feels like he’s won the lottery, but with the knowledge of what’s coming next, it feels more akin to being reaped to participate in The Hunger Games. After being chosen, Nasubi is blindfolded and driven to a small, bare apartment, where he must strip naked and start applying for mail-in magazine sweepstakes. The only way he’ll be able to get food, clothes, entertainment, anything is by winning these prizes. And the challenge only ends once he’s racked up the equivalent of one million yen’s worth.

To make matters even more complicated, Nasubi isn’t aware the endeavor is being televised. While he knows he’s being filmed, powerful producer Tsuchiya has lied and told him that most of the footage will not be aired — something he is grateful for, considering he promised his family he wouldn’t go nude. Thus begins Nasubi’s year of isolation, starvation, and depression while — unbeknownst to him — the world tunes in weekly to laugh.

‘The Contestant’ Is the Scariest Horror Movie of the Year

The Contestant is a documentary about a reality show, but it’s so bizarre and dark that it feels more like a horror movie or an episode ripped from the dystopian sci-fi series Black Mirror. There’s even a pretty clear-cut protagonist and antagonist. The former is Nasubi, a comedian from a traditional family in Fukushima. While many people cared about watching him endure the challenge when the show was airing, director Clair Titley does an excellent job of making us care about Nasubi as a person through powerful sit-down interviews with him. It’s impossible not to feel for him right away as he recounts being bullied at school, even getting his stage name from the taunts. (“Nasubi” means “eggplant” in Japanese — a title he was teased with due to his long face.) Because he had to move around a lot and struggled to make friends, he recalls entertaining people as a means of protecting himself. When he grew up, he ambitiously headed to Tokyo to try and get his big break despite not having any connections. To put it bluntly, he was vulnerable and a prime target for exploitation.

And that’s exactly what TV producer Tsuchiya did. Tsuchiya is the antagonist of the story — and a self-proclaimed one at that, gleefully recalling the fact that Darth Vader’s theme music used to play when he walked on screen. Titley also gets a detailed, candid interview from him, which she sometimes juxtaposes with Nasubi’s, so it’s like they’re in conversation with one another — an interesting and effective narrative technique.

Nasubi claims that Tsuchiya went from a god to a devil in his mind throughout the process, though Tsuchiya views himself more as a mad scientist. He has a producer’s brain, with some of his manipulation techniques familiar to anyone who used to watch Quinn and Rachel do it on UnREAL, but there’s a sociological curiosity to him, too. He doesn’t just want to make good TV — he wants to see what humanity will do when pushed to extremes like in the Milgram or Stanford Prison Experiments. He genuinely believes that all humans are fascinating and wants to prove that, though, unfortunately, his obsession trumps his compassion. One particularly chilling moment comes when Nasubi remembers how Tsuchiya was smiling when he was telling him to strip. He couldn’t wait to see what would happen but gave no thought to Nasubi’s embarrassment or fear.

‘The Contestant’ Is a Bright, Brutal Journey
Image via Hulu

And it only goes downhill from there. Hearing the audience laugh when Nasubi is struggling is haunting, and seeing the silly, colorful graphics pop up on the screen with the footage is equally harrowing. Nasubi comes off as a genuinely kind man from the get-go, something that’s cemented once the film gets into all the good he’s done with his fame since being on the show, which makes what he endures in the name of entertainment feel even more cruel. He starts off with a positive attitude for the first few weeks of the experiment, but as time goes on, he grows more negative and depressed. Though they give him measly servings of crackers to live on before he wins any food, it isn’t enough sustenance. And once he starts winning edible items — even if it is nothing more than fiber jelly, rice without any proper way to cook it, or even dog food — that’s what he has to resort to.

“I felt robbed of my strength, both physically and mentally,” Nasubi recounts, citing hair loss, body aches, an inability to sleep, and intense feelings of isolation and loneliness. He even considers suicide, as death feels like the only way out. It might seem absurd with the facts alone — after all, the door to the outside world isn’t locked; technically, he could leave at any time — but there are twisted psychological games at play. Just as cult documentaries often help us understand and empathize with those victims, so too does The Contestant, putting us in Nasubi’s headspace.

Titley paces the documentary well, as “Life in Prizes” ends at almost exactly the halfway mark, leaving us wondering where we go from here — something Nasubi was in the dark about as well. The reveal that the journey is far from over feels like a punch to the gut, and there’s a sick feeling you get once Nasubi finds himself in a hellish Groundhog Day of sorts just days after finding victory. “After raising him up, we dropped him right back to rock bottom,” Tsuchiya says, clearly still proud of what he’s masterminded. By the time Nasubi is taken to a third location and immediately starts stripping without being told, it’s clear there’s been severe conditioning — a complete breaking of the spirit. Frankly, it feels wrong to witness. How could people sit by and not only watch this happen but revel in it?

‘The Contestant’ Only Scratches the Surface of Its Consequences
Image via Hulu

But don’t modern audiences do the same thing every day? Aren’t we all complicit in allowing this toxic culture to not only persist but evolve and thrive? The Dance Moms memes are fun, but the truth is, we’re watching minors be traumatized for our enjoyment. The Real Housewives are a blast to quote, but we’re often making a spectacle of alcoholism and mental health issues. Squid Game: The Challenge is one of Netflix’s most successful series, but at the end of the day, we’re watching people desperate for money become numbers, hoping to make a better life for themselves with the cash prize. There are a plethora of implications that naturally arise from The Contestant, and its main downfall is that it’s not interested in exploring them or tracking and connecting their impact to modern-day media.

The Contestant is thorough when it comes to exploring the timeframe of the show and immediately after, but there are holes. There’s about a decade that’s practically skipped over, from the show’s end in 2002 to the Fukushima earthquake in 2011. Nasubi has to go to the doctor, but we never find out whether there were any specific health issues. His diaries are made into several books and became bestsellers, but we don’t know if Nasubi got any of those profits. In fact, we’re not even sure if he saw a penny from the show itself, as it’s stated he never signed a contract.

The Contestant is riveting, but it stops short of the type of analysis that would take it to the next level. It starts a conversation about this particular situation, but it doesn’t quite spark a dialogue about the bigger issues at hand in terms of reality TV and the murky ethics of making and consuming it. Although perhaps unfair to ask that of a film like this, as that’s a subject that would easily take entire seasons of television to cover well.

Though a rather bleak and heavy watch, The Contestant does end on a surprisingly hopeful note. The thesis the film goes with — that humans can’t exist alone — may feel overly simplistic for all of the complex moral quandaries it raises, but it’s still a sweet sentiment. And the fact that gratitude for his support system is what Nasubi chooses to take away from the experience is heartwarming. After all, at the end of the day, family and friends are life’s real prizes.

The Contestant ‘The Contestant’ is a harrowing and humanizing exploration of a bizarre Japanese TV programProsThe pacing is clever and effective.We get to intimately know and empathize with Nasubi.The tone is effectively haunting yet leaves room for hope. ConsA few crucial years in Nasubi’s life feel glossed-over.The film doesn’t dive into this program’s larger impact on the reality genre.

The Contestant is now available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.

Watch on Hulu