Rental Family, 2025.
Written and Directed by Hikari.
Starring Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Akira Emoto, and Shannon Gorman.
SYNOPSIS:
Fraser plays an American actor adrift in Japan, hired by a rental family agency to “perform” roles in the lives of strangers. A father connecting to a daughter he doesn’t know, a second player for a man who just wants to play video games—these are the kinds of lives he intersects with. And yet, in these fleeting performances, something true is revealed. We realize, slowly and devastatingly, that the only real thing in many of these lives might be the lie they’re paying for.
There are moments in Rental Family that are straight out of a soap opera—a man appearing out of the blue to tell a young girl he’s her father. Two strangers pretending to elope so one can be with their real lover. These moments don’t just make up the movie. They are the movie. Rental Family speaks to a world with the aching desire to connect but has forgotten how in all ways but Capitalism. Fraser, perfectly cast, gently embodies both sides of that yearning playing an actor who fills these roles and pays for companionship himself. The movie itself is manufactured with its own hypocrisy in mind, ‘selling emotion’ as one character calls it, but it still feels earned all the same.
Fraser himself put it tearfully at the screening I attended: Rental Family reflects the “loneliness epidemic” of the modern world. Phillip, the character he plays, doesn’t just get paid to be in other people’s lives—he also pays for companionship himself. One of his closest relationships, heartbreakingly, is with his agent—and it exists entirely over the phone. No handshakes, no eye contact, just a voice on the other end. The actor who rents himself out also rents a companion for his own emptiness, and the only person who knows his real name does not know his real face. In a world where connection is commodified or abstracted into a ringtone, Fraser’s performance captures the aching human cost. What does it mean to matter in someone else’s life, even if only for an afternoon? And more chillingly: what happens if the actor decides to stay after the curtain call?
For his part, Fraser doesn’t power through this film; he glides through it. Towering, physically and emotionally, he is a gentle giant who seems to bend not just under the low door frames of Tokyo apartments but under the invisible weight of other people’s needs. Post-The Whale, we’ve come to see a new Brendan Fraser—one less concerned with physical comedy and more interested in inviting intimacy. If the eyes are windows to the soul, Fraser is Shang Tsung from Mortal Kombat—able to channel grief and so many lives, all in a single character.
He’s matched by Shōgun star Takehiro Hira, who plays the stoic yet empathetic owner of the rental family agency. Together, they represent two sides of the same coin—one trying to keep the illusion intact, the other wondering what it would feel like if it were real. The newcomer, Shannon Mahina Gorman, avoids the pitfalls of child-actor sentimentality, delivering a grounded performance that smartly does not overdo it and is the film’s greatest strength.
The director known mononymously as Hikari, wisely chooses not to push too hard. In lesser hands, the story of a little girl needing a father figure would have been drowned in saccharine manipulation. But Hikari trusts her actors’ faces as much as their words. She finds emotional resonance not in breakdowns or grand speeches, but the lines unspoken after an actor is dismissed. She directs like a musician in concert not just with the music, but with the production design, and editing, knowing the spaces between the notes are often the most important.
Alex Somers and Jónsi, from the band Sigur Rós provide the film’s score, ethereal and human all at once. It’s not the best use of the latter’s work—that still belongs to Matt Shapiro’s 2008: The Cinescape on YouTube—but it layers scenes without putting it on too thick, offering the fake memories its audience desires. And the remixed version of David Byrne’s Glass, Concrete & Stone used so effectively in the trailer is put to good use in here too.
Much of the film plays like a travelogue: Fraser ducking under door frames, wandering through parks, sitting quietly in convenience stores. All cozy yet comfortably photographed by Takuro Ishizaka. But these moments aren’t filler—they’re the whole movie.
There’s little time for depth in the screenplay—by design. Each scene cuts in and out like a vignette, allowing us only glimpses of these temporary relationships. But it’s in this fragmentation that Hikari finds something worthwhile. The third act (which I won’t spoil) delivers a predictable yet punchy emotional payoff, using the very limitations of its setup as a narrative strength.
Rental Family is one of the best films of the year and barring The Mummy and its sequel, this is the best film of Brendan Fraser’s career. A warm hug of a movie for people who have forgotten what a hug feels like.
For a film about selling emotion the story does pack together a little too neatly— the resulting impact ephemeral or too restrained for some—but it is an easy recommendation to anyone. It doesn’t ask us to believe in miracles, only in moments. And in a world increasingly starved for connection, maybe that’s enough.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Will Hume – Follow me on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
