“Lumberjack The Monster” is a psychological thriller movie that follows Akira’s life. Akira is a psychopath and has a friend, Sugimati, who kills without feeling remorse. However, one day, Akira is attacked, and when he is with the doctors, he realizes there is a foreign object inside his brain. Upon further investigation, Akira realizes there was an illegal surgery performed on him, which caused him to become a psychopath. Now, the object is broken, and Akira has feelings he has not felt before.
This article contains spoilers.
Lumberjack The Monster (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
The film opens with a narration from a child reading the story of Lumberjack, the monster. The cops arrive at the Toma mansion as they have a reason to believe that Midori Toma has abducted children. As the police suspected, Midori was with a child reading the Lumberjack Monster story. But to the police’s horror, there were around 15 children dead in an adjacent room. Knowing she will be arrested, Midori kills herself in front of the cops.
In the present day, Akira (lawyer) is being tailed by a hospital employee, Yabe, who is working with Sugitani (Akira’s surgeon friend). Yabe had heard about forged death certificates and wanted to blackmail Akira and Sugitani for them. However, Yabe poses a danger, and Akira murders the man. To confirm the reasons, Akira visits Sugitami, who assures Akira that Yabe intended to blackmail Sugitani because Yabe was misusing funds and was about to be fired.
What is found inside Akira’s brain?
In a parking lot, Akira is suddenly attacked by a man in a mask and axe. The masked monster tells Akira that monsters like him deserve to die and tries to strike Akira. However, Akira dodges the attacks, but the masked monster swings his axe and hits Akira’s head. At the hospital, Akira is recovering well, but the doctors tell him that there is a neuro chip inside Akira’s brain. At first, Akira is shocked as he is unaware of a foreign thing in his brain.
Meanwhile, the police are investigating murders, which they seem to think is a serial killing. The first victim is 39-year-old Masumi Ishikawa, who had ruined many lives because of a pyramid scheme. The second victim is Saburo Iwata, who had been convicted before for rape, injury among others. In fact, the link the cops find right now to suspect it to be a serial killer is that, in both cases, the brain is removed. After Inspector Inui tries to find a connection between the two victims, he realizes both people grew up in an orphanage but different ones. In a flashback, we learn Inui had been demoted for raising a hand on Kenmochi, who was suspected of killing his wife. After getting hit, Kenmochi filed a complaint with the police for injury, resulting in Inui’s transfer.
What does the neuro chip do?
After his discharge from the hospital, Akira visits Sugitami. He is told that neuro chip surgeries have been illegal and that the chip was inserted in his brain before he went to the orphanage. The neuro chip affects the brain’s morality and empathy centers. Sugimati guesses the chip was inserted to suppress abnormal behavior. However, Akira scoffs at the idea that he would change, and Sugimati says psychopaths like him and Akira are the chosen ones.
The police find another dead body, this time a freelance photographer called Yoshio Mitsua, known for invading people’s privacy. Other than his mission to find the masked monster, Akira talks to Emi (his fiancée) about taking over her father’s law firm. While having the conversation, he remembers killing Emi’s father and making it look like suicide. Weirdly, Akira feels some emotions and goes out for a run and hears a child crying. More memories come through, including a young boy asking Akira to run when he was a child. As Akira stops to help the child, the masked monster approaches, and they fight. To save himself, Akira jumps off the bridge.
Toshiro finds a connection to Akira
The cops find another victim, and Inspector Toshiro realizes the killer was in a hurry to compensate for a failed attempt at murder. With this realization, Toshiro wonders if the serial killer was the one who attacked Akira. Meanwhile, Emi visits Akira and helps him tend his wounds but is interrupted by Toshiro and Inui. Since Akira wants to catch the killer himself, he does not reveal the entire truth to Toshiro. Through the conversation, Akira tells Sugitani he knows who the killer is, and the killer is after the neuro chips. At the same time, Toshiro visits the hospital where Akira was treated and gets his file without a warrant. Akira and Sugitani torture Akira’s doctor, thinking he is the killer. However, the doctor refuses the accusations, and Akira is unable to kill the doctor. To finish what they started, Sugitani kills the doctor.
Toma’s experiments on children
The police and Akira find out about the neuro chips simultaneously. Sugitani tells Akira that he was the unknown survivor of the neuro chips surgeries that Toma did. Subsequently, the cops invite Kitajima, who had investigated the Toma case. Kitajima explains that the case started as child abduction. However, when the officers visited the Toma house, they saw 15 dead children that Midori Toma had experimented on. Only one child, Takeshi, survived – that was the only successful experiment, and the neuro chip was kept a secret to protect Takeshi. Furthermore, Kitajima says that more children were scattered across town who had been victims of the experiment.
Meanwhile, Sugitami explains to Akira that Tomas experimented to turn children into psychopaths as Toma’s son was a psychopath, and the neuro chip was created to cure psychopaths. Since Tomas could not find enough test subjects who were psychopaths to find a cure for it, they turned innocent children into psychopaths. Now Akira’s neuro chip is broken. He needs to find another chip to remain a psychopath. But Sugimati is scared for himself and tells Akira whether he chooses to be a psychopath or not, their fates will be the same as they cannot escape from the crimes they have committed.
Akira visits the orphanage
Before leaving to meet Kenmochi, aka Takeshi, Toshiro meets with Inui, who asks her what is wrong with someone hunting down psychopaths, which takes Toshiro by surprise. At Kenmochi’s house, Kenmochi is unafraid of the masked monster and pushes the cops away. Meanwhile, Akira visits his old orphanage and learns he was once a bully in the orphanage. The orphanage used to get anonymous calls asking if Akira was full of himself and not bothered by bullying. Outside, Emi is hanging out with the children in the orphanage, singing songs, and hearing this, Akira starts to cry.
To test Akira, Sugimati dresses as the masked monster and tries to attack him, but Akira does not kill him. Watching this, Sugimati is disappointed that Akira is starting to behave like a normal human being. At the same time, Akira promises that even if he becomes normal, he won’t rat on him. Instead of embracing normalcy, Akira asks Sugimati to prepare for surgery since Akira knows who the killer is and will soon have the data required to perform the surgery.
Who is the masked monster?
Now, Toshiro is in fear and visits Akira, but nobody is home, so she places a tracker on Akira’s vehicle. The police can’t find Inui and assume he is the killer since he has the motive and breaks down his home’s door, although they can’t find him. As they wonder what to do, Inui appears and tells them he is at Saki’s grave (Kenmochi’s wife), and Toshiro realizes Kenmochi may be the killer.
Meanwhile, Akira gets a picture from Emi’s phone, which is of Emi tied with the message ‘come to Toma’s mansion’. Fearing what will come, Akira rushes to Toma’s mansion, and Toshiro heads there using the tracker. Once Akira enters the mansion, he is met with some vague memories as a child, and he finds Emi. Though tied up, Emi tries to warn Akira not to get closer, and the masked monster starts to attack. As Akira tries to attack, his leg gets stuck in the trap set-up. Taking this opportunity, Akira asks the man to remove his mask, and Akira is not surprised to see it is Kenmochi.
After revealing his face, Kenmochi tells Akira his story. Like everyone else, Kenmochi had a wife, and Inui hit him, making the neuro chip break. By then, he had killed his wife with his bare hands. After the chip broke, Kenmochi started having emotions. Using the opportunity, Akira asks Kenmochi to let Emi go, and he does as he is told. Kenmochi continues his story and says he had vowed to kill humanmade psychopaths and realized that those around the psychopaths had died, including the death of Emi’s father.
Lumberjack The Monster (2023) Movie Ending Explained:
What happens to Akira in the end?
Hearing this, Emi wants this to be a lie. But Akira holds a knife to Emi’s head and confesses that he had killed her father. Unable to contain his anger, watching Akira torment Emi, Kenmochi attacks Akira, and they get into a fight, and Akira stabs Kenmochi. They both take a breather, and Akira realizes the person Kenmochi wanted to kill was himself and tells Kenmochi that when he attacked him the first time, his neuro chip broke as well, and he owed it to Emi to make him feel things.
Kenmochi reveals that before the experiment, Akira was a crybaby and was kind towards others. In the end, Kenmochi apologizes to Akira for not being successful in saving him when they were kids. Then Akira realizes the kid who had asked him to run away was Kenmochi. They share a cigarette, and once Akira left, Kenmochi burnt the place with the cigarette. The cops arrive late, and Kenmochi is amidst the fire. After the case, Akira takes over the law firm, and Toshiro asks him not to die until she comes for him with evidence. Later, Akira gets home and hugs Emi, but she stabs him. After that, Akira hits her, making sure there are bruises, and tells her that Emi had stabbed him in self-defense and to inform Toshiro. As Emi runs to the cops, Akira dies.
Read More: Everything Coming to Netflix in June 2024
In the end, Akira dies having emotions like an average person as he helps Emi not get convicted of murder by hitting her to show she was acting in self-defense. The malfunctioning chip ripped away the veil of apathy that shrouded Akira. Now, he sees the world through a new lens, one filled with empathy and guilt. However, just like Kenmochi, he can’t escape the shadow of the crimes he committed in the darkness.
