Sitges 2025: A new version of “The Shrinking Man” with Jean Dujardin
by Alex Billington
October 17, 2025
“I am the sum of my experiences; the narrowing has only eliminated certain superficialities.” There’s a brand new film adaptation of the classic horror story The Incredible Shrinking Man ready for viewing. But few people have heard of it yet, since it is a European project and has just been previewed at the 2025 Sitges Film Festival. This Franco-Belgian film is officially titled The shrinking manwhich simply translates to The shrinking man. This fresh, stripped-down new version has chosen not to use the additional adjective “incredible” – immortalized by the iconic 1957 sci-fi horror classic. The Incredible Shrinking Man film, directed by Jack Arnold and starring Grant Williams. This adaptation, based on the original 1956 novel by Richard Matheson, The shrinking manfeatures the always watchable Jean Dujardin like Paul, a shipbuilder who slowly begins to get smaller and smaller. It’s a peculiar and fascinating film that doesn’t live up to its potential, but nonetheless remains an intriguing and, above all, entertaining watch. If anything, it feels more like a streaming movie than a theatrical epic, but there are still some engaging scenes and Dujardin is fantastic as always.
This new version of The shrinking man is directed by Dutch filmmaker Jan Kounen (of Renegade, Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, Vape wave), based on a screenplay written by Christophe Deslandes & Jan Kounen. Aside from placing him in a beach house and changing the main character’s profession to shipbuilding, it’s pretty much exactly what the original novel describes. “Once an ordinary husband and father, [Paul] finds himself shrinking with no end in sight… His wife and family transform into unattainable giants, the family cat becomes a predatory menace and [Paul] must struggle to survive in a world that seems to get bigger and more perilous – until he is confronted with the ultimate limits of fear and existence. » Jean Dujardin plays Paul – at first he’s as mundane as this book describes him, but really stands out once he becomes emotional and expressive as he becomes small. A swimming abnormality is what begins its shrinking process. While he has a wife (played by Marie-Josée Croze) and a young girl, the film quickly becomes a one-man show once it starts getting smaller and smaller. When the cat accidentally enters the house, it escapes into the basement and ends up getting stuck there. The film goes into survival mode and becomes something else.
Also taken directly from the novel, the film’s big bad villain is a bizarre spider who begins hunting him once he sets up camp in the basement. The intriguing twist to this one is that the spider is an invincible force, not something it must overcome but rather something it must overcome in life. Again, this is described perfectly in Matheson’s original book: “It was more than a spider. It was all the unknown terrors of the world merged into one quivering, venomous horror. It was every anxiety, insecurity and fear in his life taking on a hideous, dark form. » At the beginning of the film, Paul tells his daughter that he will not kill the spider (even though it is a normal-sized man) because it is good, it is useful, it has a purpose and there is no need to get rid of it. But later, this creature returns to taunt and torture him. Of course, the point of this story is to teach everyone the power of perspective & relativity. Human beings are used to being a certain size. If this size changes, we will discover the world completely differently. And now cinema allows us to have a much more visceral experience by bringing this story to life with a real human being. The sets and VFX work are legit – they make this story far more believable than any of the others. Ant Man movies or any other shrinking man stories recently.
That said, this version The shrinking man we also always have the impression that something is missing. The storyline runs out of steam in the third act, the ending is non-existent, there’s not much more than a simple narrative with a superb lead performance. It’s another “rough around the edges” film, but in this case that makes it almost boring at times. Even though this type of film should never be boring… It’s also not It’s definitely a horror film, and not really science fiction either. This film has a very clean aesthetic and looks more like a strange French combo of Honey, I shrunk the kids encounter Dismiss encounter The Strange Case of Benjamin Button. The whole middle segment, when he figures out how to survive alone as a tiny being in this basement, is reminiscent of the wacky survival scenes from Dismiss. The story of his shrinking has the same mysterious, inexplicable, but still alluring vibe as Fincher’s underrated adaptation of Benjamin Bouton – and this movie ends as abruptly as that. I really wish there was more, because I enjoyed it so much, alas it never achieves the greatness it clearly aims for as a modern take on this classic story. Still, it’s a compelling story in which you must overcome your greatest fears and fight to survive in a hostile world – which remains a valuable lesson for us all.
Alex’s Sitges 2025 rating: 6.5 out of 10
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