Seven Meetings: A must-see corporate mystery for Hanzawa Naoki fans. Why a man struggling in the recruitment industry sheds tears over the clash between Kakizaki and Kitagawa

"The demon is coming."

Starting with this hair-raising first line, this work is a terrifying film that,
once you press play,
will keep you glued to the screen from start to finish with an overwhelming gravitational pull that leaves no time to breathe.

Seven Meetings, based on the novel by Jun Ikeido and directed by Katsuo Fukuzawa

This is not just a simple piece of exhilarating corporate entertainment.
I want to recommend this with all my might as a top-tier horror film and a biting black comedy, dedicated to every business person who is chased daily by quotas and unreasonable pressure.

An unpredictable story and overwhelming "face pressure"

The setting is a mid-sized manufacturer, "Tokyo Kenden."

The story begins with an incident that seems to poke at the gaps in modern compliance: a perennial section chief who is always sleeping during meetings, Kakizaki (Mansai Nomura), sues a top-selling elite section chief (Ainosuke Kataoka) for power harassment.
And from behind that inexplicable personnel move, an unimaginably massive darkness called "data falsification," born from profit-first ideology, is dragged out into the light.

The highlight is, without a doubt, the clash of "face pressure" from the star-studded cast.

The atmosphere that makes your stomach twist the moment the sales director with absolute power, Kitagawa (Teruyuki Kagawa), descends into the conference room is something else.

The glistening sweat of middle-aged men projected across the screen,
and the extraordinary facial acting performed by the heavyweights of the Kyogen and Kabuki worlds, have reached the level of a new Japanese traditional performing art.

The madness of the organization and one's own falsification and concealment

Is some degree of data tampering permissible if it means keeping the company afloat?

The film confronts us with such questions of justice, but
when I look back at my own daily life, I can't laugh at all.

Just last night, I rushed home thinking I was doing the right thing, only to ruin the "putting-to-sleep operation" for my 5-year-old, which the biggest stakeholder in my house (my wife) had been focusing all her nerves on, at the worst possible moment.
I had just been desperately trying to conceal (with profuse apologies) the fact of that major compliance violation.

Though the scale is different, it sends a chill down my spine with a strange sense of reality that I, too, am a player in "falsification" and "concealment."

The ultimate catharsis that pierces everyone who works

This film provides an overwhelming catharsis that can blow away even the small guilt of such a dirty middle-aged salesman in an instant.

"The common sense of a company is the lack of common sense in society."

You will be glued to the mystery where it's unclear who is evil and who is righteous as the story twists and turns,
and by the time you reach the scene where Kakizaki and Kitagawa face off head-on in the final act, you will find yourself shedding hot tears (or cold sweat).

You can't miss the heart-pounding fan service that will make "Hanzawa Naoki" fans grin, as a business card from Tokyo Chuo Bank appears for a split second.

On a holiday night, it is the best film to watch while hiding in your room, holding your breath in the dark, as if escaping the cold gaze of the "real demon (wife)" lurking in your home.
However, please be careful of severe sleep debt the next day, as the film is so interesting that it is impossible to pause halfway through.