The ContestantMovies like The Contestant
- Key Features:
- Reality television, Social experiment, Exploitation, Japanese culture, Media manipulation, Privacy violation, Psychological impact, True story, Ethical dilemma
- Tone:
- serious, cynical
- Target Audience:
- Documentary viewers, Social commentary enthusiasts, True crime fans, Media critics
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Discomfort
The Contestant

The incredible true story of a man who lived for 15 months trapped inside a small room, naked, starving and alone... and completely unaware that his life was being broadcast on national TV in Japan, to over 15 million viewers a week.
The Contestant
Japan's number one extreme reality show is having it's first all-American special! Six lucky contestants, chosen from thousands of applicants, will have the chance to win millions of dollars, and all they have to do is stay alive!

An unsettling look at reality television, where a disturbing game show has its contestants ending their lives for the public's enjoyment.

Journalist Shiori Ito embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country's outdated judicial and societal systems.

Tenshu is imprisoned and sentenced to death for murdering the men who raped his girlfriend. However, he manages to survive his execution and is presented with an option: face another execution attempt or subject himself to their bizarre and dangerous experiments.

Neurosurgeon Koichi uses an experimental technique to enter the brain of his beloved Atsumi, who is in a coma after attempting suicide. In his quest, Koichi drifts steadily further into the sweltering marshes of the spirit. It is soon no longer clear what is real and what is not.

Augusta, Georgia, United States, June 3, 2017. After running some errands, Reality Winner returns home, where she is approached by two men.

When 8 celebrities from around the globe are invited to compete in an online reality show, they soon realize that they are playing for their very lives, as those voted off suffer horrific consequences, broadcast live to the entire world.

In different parts of Tokyo, four young and seemingly healthy people suddenly die of heart failure at exactly the same moment. Reporter Kazuyuki Asakawa decides to investigate the deaths, and discovers that the four had stayed at a rural inn together just a week earlier. At the inn, he comes across a strange video that ends with a message saying that anyone who watches it will die exactly seven days later. Now the clock is ticking for Asakawa. Can he break the curse in time?

Nishi is a loser who has a crush on his childhood girlfriend. After an encounter with the Japanese mafia, he journeys to heaven and back, and ends up trapped in an even more unlikely place.

Seven years after the death of his wife, widower Shigeharu seeks advice on how to find a new wife from a colleague. Taking advantage of their position as a film company, they stage an audition. Interviewing a series of women, Shigeharu is enchanted by the quiet Asami. But soon things take a twisted turn as Asami isn’t what she seems to be.

Shamoto runs a small tropical fish shop. When his daughter Mitsuko is caught shoplifting at a grocery store a man named Murata steps in to settle things between the girl and the store manager. Murata also runs a tropical fish shop and he and Shamoto soon become friendly. However Murata hides many dark secrets behind his friendly face.

Herbert Stempel's transformation into an unexpected television personality unfolds as he secures victory on the cherished American game show, 'Twenty-One.' However, when the show introduces the highly skilled contestant Charles Van Doren to replace Stempel, it compels Stempel to let out his frustrations and call out the show as rigged. Lawyer Richard Goodwin steps in and attempts to uncover the orchestrated deception behind the scenes.

A blind sculptor kidnaps an artists' model and imprisons her in his warehouse studio – a shadowland of perverse monuments to the female form. Here a deranged passion play of sensual and sexual obsession is acted out in world where sight is replaced by touch.

As host of his own hit TV series, 'MAN VS', Doug Woods is forced to fend for himself for five days in remote locations with no crew, food, or water, only the cameras he carries on his back to film his experiences. Doug's in the remote woods for a routine episode, until he's awoken by an earth-shaking crash. Things get weirder as it becomes clear Doug isn't alone. Someone or something is watching him.

Masked thugs torture an innocent woman in increasingly brutal ways.

Drawn by the exorbitantly high hourly wage of 112,000 Japanese yen, ten men and women gather at a mansion. Everyone thinks the simple psychology experiment will get them some quick cash... until one of them winds up dead. The participants are overcome with frenzied suspicion. Various deadly weapons are left in their rooms and they are killed off one by one.

A mockumentary following an ambitious TV network executive trying to produce a controversial reality show where contestants play Russian Roulette.

Mike and Kate, a young couple, get the once-in-a lifetime chance to win a cool five million dollars. The challenge: Live for 50 days in a blank space. Sticking it out for thirty days, and the five million are theirs. How difficult can it be?

An unnamed doctor has always had everything he's ever wanted, but that has only made him develop more extreme and depraved needs. He kidnaps a young couple in the prime of their life together and forces them into a game of torment that slowly extinguishes their hopes for survival.

A family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island, where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.

In a Tokyo love hotel district, a woman is found dead in a derelict apartment. As police investigate, a romance novelist's wife lives a life that seems simply a daily repetition without romance. To break away from the loveless monotony, she follows her desires and becomes a nude model enacting sex in front of a camera. Soon, she meets a mentor and begins selling her body to strangers, while at home, she hides behind the façade that she's still the doting wife she's supposed to be.

A celebrity photograph sparks a court case as a tabloid magazine spins a scandalous yarn over a painter and a famous singer.

The Cove tells the amazing true story of how an elite team of individuals, films makers and free divers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate the hidden cove in Japan, shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The shocking discoveries were only the tip of the iceberg.

A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.

A documentary on a former Miss Wyoming who is charged with abducting and imprisoning a young Mormon Missionary.

A seemingly innocent man is abducted by a notorious L.A. serial killer, who forces his victims to switch roles with him so that he can enact his own capture, torture and murder.

1984; Michael Larson, an unemployed ice-cream truck driver from Ohio, steps onto the game show "Press Your Luck" harboring a secret: the key to endless amounts of money. But his winning streak is threatened when the executives in the control room start to uncover his real motivations.

An insurance salesman begins to suspect that his whole life is actually some sort of reality TV show.

Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.

Something diabolical is taking place on the set of "The Task" a new reality show in which players complete terrifying missions within the confines of an abandoned prison hoping to win a hefty cash prize. As six young students explore their new environment, malicious spirits make their presence known in the most gruesome ways imaginable, Unable to escape the labyrinthine prison, the contestants become unwitting pawns caught at the centre of a blood-soaked night of terror.

Nursing student Asuka has just moved into an apartment complex with her parents and younger brother. On the first night in her new room, she is awoken by a strange scratching sound coming from the apartment of her neighbor, a reclusive old man who has refused all attempts at communication. Concerned over his well being, Asuka enters his home only to find him dead from malnutrition. Worse, it looks as if he had been trying to claw his way into her room. Asuka learns that there have been a number of strange deaths in the complex over the years from Shinobu, the handyman cleaning up the old man’s apartment. Even the girls at school whisper rumors of it being haunted.

When the wife of a 17th century Kyoto scroll-maker is falsely accused of having an affair with his best employee, the pair flee the city and find themselves falling for one another.

20 volunteers agree to take part in a seemingly well-paid experiment advertised by the university. It is supposed to be about aggressive behavior in an artificial prison situation. A journalist senses a story behind the ad and smuggles himself in among the test subjects. They are randomly divided into prisoners and guards. What seems like a game at the beginning soon turns into bloody seriousness.

Nine strangers wake up in a house with no recollection how they got there and no way out. The voice on the PA introduces them to a grisly game they must play. The prize is $5 million and their life.

Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring.

A seemingly unremarkable man called “Mouse” is caught by the police. In exchange for his freedom, he goes undercover, infiltrates a drug ring, and arranges a fake deal, but an unexpected turn of events occurs.

A drama centered on the relationship between journalist Michael Finkel and Christian Longo, an FBI Most Wanted List murderer who for years lived outside the U.S. under Finkel's name.

A scientist taints his mother's scientific experiment with his own drug that transforms pain into a pleasurable experience. Unfortunately for the three women involved in the experiment, the drug works a little bit too well.

A talk show hostess takes a camera crew out to an abandoned factory to investigate a purported snuff film that was made there. As she gets closer to the truth, she and her friends are subjected to a brutal nightmare.

A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.

AB Surveillance Solutions, a security company seems to be keeping logs and watching a family as they live a seemingly average life. However it seems that there is something darker going on under the facade.

Hisashi and Mai are a happy couple in their 20s who are engaged to be married. But three months before their wedding, Mai becomes seriously ill. Her heart stops momentarily, and she falls into a deep coma. Hisashi visits Mai at the hospital every day before work. With no idea if or when she will ever awake, Mai’s parents encourage Hisashi to find someone else, but he refuses to give up and continues to pray for her recovery. As if his prayers are answered, Mai begins to regain consciousness several years later, and even utters a few words. But tragically, she has suffered brain damage and has no memory of Hisashi.

After losing her parents, young flower selling Midori is put up by a fairground group. She is abused and forced to slavery, until the arrival of an enigmatic magician of short stature, who gives her hope for a better future.

Five young people apply to live in an isolated house together for six months whilst their every move is filmed by numerous cameras.

Thrown naked into a desolate room with thirteen strangers, Tonya discovers that she is the final contestant in a deadly game. Restrained by lethal electronic collars, the players must utilize hints and tools from a box marked "pieces" to find both an exit and the reason for their abduction. One by one the players are eliminated as their "curfew" begins and the lights go out. With each dead body comes another clue, which they use to discover that one of them is the killer. The question is ... which one?

A homeless man meets a medical school student who pays him to volunteer for a surgical procedure known as trepanation, drilling a hole in his skull, which ends up giving him the ability to communicate with the dark side of people’s subconscious minds.

A detective starts spiraling out of control when a wave of gruesome murders with seemingly similar bizarre circumstances is sweeping Tokyo.

Two working class youtubers ‘in the making’ enter an abandoned mansion to get their basketball back, and get lost inside while pranking each other. They record their ‘quick adventure’ with their phones for their audience, and tweak it with a fake phantom appearance to attract more followers to their YouTube channel. When uploaded the video goes viral, so they start a challenge: if the video reaches a certain number of views, they will enter the house again, at night, alone, totally unprotected. As fans react positively, they will do as promised, not only to discover and unveil the true nature of the place and their inhabitants, but to realize they might not be among the living anymore. Which opens a question - how far would you go to be famous?

A crew from a paranormal reality television show lock themselves in a haunted psychiatric hospital. They search for evidence of paranormal activity as they shoot what ends up becoming their final episode.

After waking up in an abandoned factory, six kidnapped terns realize they are contestants on a reality show called "Are You Scared?"

A woman, Tome, is born to a lower class family in Japan in 1918. The title refers to an insect, repeating its mistakes, as in an infinite circle. Imamura, with this metaphor, introduces the life of Tome, who keeps trying to change her poor life.

A con man and a would-be filmmaking crew force themselves into the lives of two grief-scarred young women. But nothing is as it seems.

Five strangers face the unthinkable when they wake up and find themselves trapped. With no idea how they got there they frantically try to figure out how to escape. The disoriented group quickly realise the truth about their situation when they discover another room containing enough water to survive for 30 days… and a razor sharp surgical knife. The intention becomes quite clear. Whoever put them in this place wants to see just how long it will take before the hunger makes them commit unspeakable acts and cross a very deadly line.

The film is a graphic depiction of the war atrocities committed by the Japanese at Unit 731, the secret biological weapons experimentation unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The film details the various cruel medical experiments Unit 731 inflicted upon the Chinese and Soviet prisoners at the tail-end of the war.

A self-destructive man becomes a powerful member of the yakuza but quickly loses his self-control. Based on the true story of Rikio Ishikawa.

In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act.

The sought-after images of top model Jennifer adorn magazine covers and billboards worldwide. When alone at a club, she is abducted and incarcerated in a cell with another prisoner. When their captor subjects the two to torture, they commit to escaping the chamber of horrors before they're killed.

In 1971, Stanford's Professor Philip Zimbardo conducts a controversial psychology experiment in which college students pretend to be either prisoners or guards, but the proceedings soon get out of hand. Based on a true story.

Anna Tsuchiya blasts back in time playing an oiran, a top-notched geisha of the Edo period’s Yoshiwara District, navigating brothel politics while trying to cling to the man she loves.

Eight talented candidates have reached the final stage of selection to join the ranks of a mysterious and powerful corporation. Entering a windowless room, where an armed guard keeps watch, they are given 80 minutes to answer one simple question.

Shy outcast Kokoro has been avoiding school for weeks when she discovers a portal in her bedroom mirror. She reaches through and finds herself transported to an enchanting castle where she is joined by six other students. When a girl in a wolf mask explains that they have been invited to play a game, the teens must work together to uncover the mysterious connection that unites them. However, anyone who breaks the rules will be eaten by a wolf.

North Korea. The last communist country in the world. Unknown, hermetic and fascinating. Formerly known as “The Hermit Kingdom” for its attempts to remain isolated, North Korea is one of the largest sources of instability as regards world peace. It also has the most militarized border in the world, and the flow of impartial information, both going in and out, is practically non-existent. As the recent Sony-leaks has shown, it is the perfect setting for a propaganda war.

War photographer W. Eugene Smith travels back to Japan where he documents the devastating effect of mercury poisoning in coastal communities.

Shuhei is leading a tough life. His alcoholic mother Akiko can only hook up with bad guys and order Shuhei to go get money from his disapproving grandparents instead of going to school. Except raising the little half-sister, his rock-bottom life seems to have no end.

Alain and Marie moved to the suburb house of their dreams. But the real estate agent warned them: what is in the basement may well change their lives forever.

Akira works as a lawyer. One day, he meets with his former client Rie, who asks Akira to perform a background check on her late husband Daisuke.

Five men plot to steal a large sum of money from the local yakuza, but everything does not go as planned and the men find themselves hunted down by contract killers.

In a futuristic society, contestants pit their survival skills against each other in a fight to the death for cash prizes, and the contest is aired live on television.

Journalist David Farrier stumbles upon a mysterious tickling competition online. As he delves deeper he comes up against fierce resistance, but that doesn’t stop him getting to the bottom of a story stranger than fiction.

Three female idols appear on a television show to investigate an exorcism. An exorcist with psychic powers named Unsui claims that the show’s subjects, the Kaneda family, are cursed by a demon that’s too powerful for him to banish on his own, so he calls in a fellow exorcist to help. Soon, a reckless ghost hunter enters the fray as the three idols witness a series of terrifying events.

A mysterious video has been linked to a number of deaths, and when an inquisitive journalist finds the tape and views it herself, she sets in motion a chain of events that puts her own life in danger.

An Iranian couple living in the US become trapped inside a hotel when insidious events force them to face the secrets that have come between them, in a night that never ends.

As sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer Kakihara searches for his missing boss he comes across Ichi, a repressed and psychotic killer who may be able to inflict levels of pain that Kakihara has only dreamed of.

Drowning in debt as he's about to get married, a bright but meek salesman receives a mysterious phone call informing him that he's on a hidden-camera game show where he must execute 13 tasks to receive a multi-million dollar cash prize.

Top model Lilico, having recently undergone multiple cosmetic surgeries, begins to experience troubling side effects. As she desperately tries to retain her perfect image, Lilico descends into a world of nightmares and makes those around her miserable.

A devoted wife and mother leads a secret life as a CIA agent until her husband’s article exposes a scandal, putting her identity and loved ones at risk. As her world crumbles, she must navigate the fallout of her double life.

An American journalist travels through 19th-century Japan to find the prostitute he fell in love with but instead learns of the physical and existential horror that befell her after he left.

A dark comedy centering on the lives of a Neapolitan based family whose father, a fish merchant, is so infatuated with the reality TV show "Grande Fratello" (the Italian version of "Big Brother") he starts living his life as if he were on it.

The story of a teenage boy named Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while operating for the sake of sin as an "up-skirt" photographer. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing – which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian – dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with the guilt that's a legacy of his Catholic upbringing.

An unexpected love triangle, a seduction trap, and a random encounter are the three episodes, told in three movements to depict three female characters and trace the trajectories between their choices and regrets.

A journalist goes undercover to ferret out businessman Harrison Hill as her best friend's killer. Posing as one of his temps, she enters into a game of online cat-and-mouse.

A doctor conducts experiments on patients which end up in anguish!

Emma, a French novelist aged 27, decide to go to Berlin and join a brothel to uncover the prostitution world, the subject of her new book. Such as gonzo journalism, Emma become a prostitute and her experience, which was supposed to last a few weeks, will last two years. Was writing her book an excuse for Emma to live a shameful fantasy?

A young woman enlists in an underground game of pain endurance in the hope of winning the million dollar prize. She soon learns the real opponent is the man who's running the game, as he employs horrific methods to manipulate and defeat her.

The vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, knowing he's being watched and followed, is one day arrested and put into solitary confinement.

In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.

A cataclysmic event causes a man, who dreams of winning the lottery, to become stranded on an island with his co-workers.

For high schooler Kei—and for at least forty-six others—immortality comes as the nastiest surprise ever. Sadly for Kei, such a feat doesn't make him a superhero. In the eyes of both the general public and governments, he's a rare specimen who needs to be hunted down and handed over to scientists to be experimented on for life—a demi-human who must die a thousand deaths for the benefit of humanity.

The lives of five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation is debating the passage of an anti-prostitution law.

While investigating the horrifying death of her boyfriend, Mai Takano learns about a videotape haunted by the spirit of a disturbing girl named Sadako, which kills anyone who watches it exactly one week later. When her boyfriend’s son, Yoichi, starts to develop the same psychic abilities as Sadako, Takano must find a way to keep the boy and herself from becoming the next victims.

Six complete strangers with widely varying personalities are involuntarily placed in an endless maze of interlocking cube-shaped rooms containing deadly traps.

A young man seeking his sexual identity decides to take part in the Miss France beauty pageant.

A young man becomes convinced that the solution to all his problems is to live in jail, and he will do whatever it takes to get it.

A gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and his possessive friend Akama. Kameda’s saintly compassion exposes everyone’s wounds, steering the quartet toward jealousy, violence, and inexorable tragedy. Adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel.

A memory-wiped and defective cyborg sex slave is tossed onto the streets and taken in by a homeless woman while his corporate creators hunt him down.

The behind-the-scenes true life story of a groundbreaking producer, Milton Fruchtman, and blacklisted TV director Leo Hurwitz who, overcoming enormous obstacles, set out to capture the testimony of one of the war's most notorious Nazis, Adolf Eichmann, who is accused of executing the 'final solution' and organising the murder of 6 million Jews. This is the extraordinary story of how the trial came to be televised and the team that made it happen.



