“What I'm offering here is a chance to play roles with a real meaning.”
That line—softly delivered by Brendan Fraser in the Rental Family trailer—carries more weight than it should. Not just because it's wrapped in the timbre of an Oscar winner's late-career renaissance. But because it's trying to sell something that feels… off. Real meaning, yes. But rented?
Searchlight Pictures has dropped the first official trailer for Rental Family, the latest feature from Japanese filmmaker Hikari (aka Mitsuyo Miyazaki), who quietly made a name with 37 Seconds and cut her teeth on A24's Beef. This time, she returns with something gentler, stranger, and—if we trust the trailer—emotionally sneakier than it looks. The film is set to premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival before landing in select U.S. theaters on November 21st, 2025.
Set against the glowing grayness of modern-day Tokyo, Rental Family follows a lonely American actor—played by Fraser—drifting without purpose in a city that isn't quite his. That is, until he's hired by a Japanese “rental family” agency, a real-life industry that offers stand-ins to fill familial or social voids. A father for a graduation. A brother for a wedding. A husband—just for the weekend. It's bizarre. It's real. And in Hikari's hands, it's strangely human.
The trailer doesn't shout. It hums. Tinted with soft neutrals and neon accents, it leans into emotional restraint—mirroring the Japanese custom of polite detachment—while gradually pulling us into Fraser's growing sense of warmth and disorientation. There's a melancholy to it. But not the indulgent kind. More the kind that creeps up while waiting for a train you're not sure you want to catch.
Fraser is doing something different here. Gone is the bombast of The Whale, the showboating pain. Here, he's more like a weary interpreter—walking a thin line between performance and real affection. And for once, a Western character in Tokyo isn't made to feel like an exoticized fish out of water. Instead, Rental Family presents him as a man floating in limbo—between roles, between homes, between truths.
If it reminds you of Werner Herzog's Family Romance, LLC (2020), you're not wrong. That film walked similar terrain—emotionally reserved, culturally surgical, and quietly devastating. But where Herzog approached the subject with alien curiosity, Hikari seems more invested in emotional payoff. There's something deeply tender underneath her frame—a desire to not just expose the transactional coldness of rented affection, but to excavate its humanity.
The supporting cast—Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Gorman, and Akira Emoto—brings texture to the trailer's minimalism. We glimpse gentle conflicts, forced smiles, moments of intimacy that look rehearsed… until they're not. There's a scene where a “daughter” hugs Fraser with practiced politeness, and for a second, you see the switch flip—he believes it. Or needs to.
The trailer doesn't overplay its hand. It lets the absurdity breathe. But it also makes room for quiet devastation. One of the final shots—Fraser alone in a rental home, gently straightening a picture frame he doesn't belong in—is as subtle as it is sharp.
Behind the lens, Hikari's touch is unintrusive, almost invisible. Her work on Beef proved she can direct emotionally fraught material without overstating it, and that restraint seems intact here. She co-wrote the script with Stephen Blahut, with production by Julia Lebedev, Eddie Vaisman, Shin Yamaguchi, and herself.
This is not a film that's going to set the box office on fire. Nor does it want to. Rental Family looks like the kind of sleeper that quietly wrecks you three days later—when you're grocery shopping and suddenly wonder if the man smiling at you from aisle six is someone else entirely.
In the current landscape of algorithm-driven drama and trauma-porn storytelling, Rental Family feels… odd. But maybe that's its secret. A film about playing pretend that doesn't pretend to be anything else.
Searchlight Pictures will release Rental Family in U.S. theaters on November 21st, 2025. Until then, keep your roles close—and your real emotions closer.
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Would you ever rent someone to feel something real? Or is that the most honest lie we've invented yet? Drop your thoughts below.
5 Things to Know About ‘Rental Family' Before Its TIFF 2025 Premiere
- Brendan Fraser's Tokyo Transformation
The Oscar-winner plays an American actor hired to impersonate family members for strangers. - Directed by Hikari (aka Mitsuyo Miyazaki)
Known for 37 Seconds and episodes of A24's Beef, Hikari brings quiet emotional precision to the screen. - Inspired by Real Japanese “Rental” Services
The story draws loose inspiration from Werner Herzog's Family Romance, LLC, exploring the psychology of stand-in relationships. - First Premiere at Toronto
Rental Family will make its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival before heading to U.S. theaters. - Searchlight Sets Fall Release
The film opens in select U.S. theaters on November 21st, 2025, aiming for indie awards-season attention.
