Monster 2024

Saori Mugino is a devoted single mother raising her fifth-grade son, Minato, who starts showing unusual, troubling behaviors. He begins by cutting his own hair and returning home with only one shoe, a small, unsettling pattern that suggests something deeper may be happening. One night, Minato vanishes, and when Saori finally tracks him down, she finds him in an abandoned train tunnel. The fear and worry she feels push her to question what is happening at home and in his life.

She suspects that Minato may be suffering at the hands of his teacher, Mr. Hori, and challenges the school with her concerns. The faculty respond with cold detachment, and Hori’s apology feels hollow and disingenuous. When Saori presses the issue, Hori claims that Minato is actually bullying another student, Yori, shifting the blame away from the boy she loves and fears for. Saori’s visit to Yori’s house reveals a different kind of tension: Yori, despite his own oddities, appears to care for Minato in a protective way. The school’s response intensifies, and Hori is eventually fired, only to reappear days later. In a tense moment, Minato falls down a flight of stairs as if trying to escape him.

During a rainstorm, Hori comes to the Mugino home, and Saori learns that Minato has gone missing once again. In a pivotal sequence, a flashback from Hori’s perspective unveils another layer of the story: Minato’s disruptive acts—throwing others’ belongings and seemingly locking Yori in a bathroom stall—are observed by Hori as concerning, and his visit to Yori’s house reveals that Yori’s father, Kiyotaka, is an abusive alcoholic. Faced with pressure from the school and a damaged reputation, Hori resigns under the weight of scrutiny, journalism, and the strain of a severed relationship with his girlfriend. He returns to confront Minato at the school and, in a moment of despair, contemplates jumping from the roof after the boy falls.

The rainstorm acts as a catalyst for a realization: Hori notices a pattern in Yori’s old homework that seems to spell Minato’s name, suggesting that the two boys’ bond goes beyond simple friendship. Realizing that they were deeply connected and perhaps in love, Hori rushes to the Mugino household to offer an apology and to insist that Minato is not broken. When Saori confirms Minato’s disappearance, they hurry toward the train tunnel, hoping to find him. In the muddy, dim space of an abandoned railcar, they discover only Minato’s poncho, hinting at danger and the possibility that the truth about Minato’s life remains hidden beneath the surface.

A final flashback, this time from Minato’s viewpoint, reveals a harsh cycle of bullying that Yori endures from other boys because of his asocial and seemingly effeminate behavior. Yori’s closeness with Minato grows as he plays with Minato’s hair, prompting Minato to cut it himself in a rash moment. The two boys’ bond deepens, but Minato’s feelings begin to scare him: he worries that his romantic impulses make him unworthy as a son to his deceased father. When a night at Yori’s house arrives, a tense confrontation occurs as Yori and his father, Kiyotaka, claim that Yori has been “cured,” only for Yori to recant and spark his father’s wrath.

In the midst of these revelations, the school’s headmistress, who has to reckon with her own role in a tragic death connected to her institution, encourages Minato to choose happiness. The rainstorm returns, and Minato finds Yori fully clothed in a bathtub, bruised and vulnerable. The two escape to the abandoned railcar, making it their refuge. Once the rain subsides, they emerge together, and a sense of rebirth seems to wash over them as they race across a field. The path they had once hoped to take, which had previously been gated off, now sits open and free, with no wreckage in sight, leaving their future open to possibility and the promise of a new beginning.