An alien in the disguise of a schoolgirl named Akira (Yuri Tsunematsu) murders Akira's family, then walks into a street where she causes a traffic crash. A second alien has hijacked the body of Shinji (Ryuhei Matsuda), a man whose wife Natsumi (Masami Nagasawa) finds the consequent changes to his personality bewildering. A third alien then invades the body of Amano (Mahiro Takasugi), a teenage boy who connects with freelance reporter Sakurai (Hiroki Hasegawa), who's trying to locate Akira and who, after becoming Amano's guide, Amano tells he is an extraterrestrial. As this group of disguised interstellar visitors travels out of the city and then across rural Japan for home, they slowly rob their hosts (and quickly rob others) of the essence of their beings, with psychological and spiritual devastation being left in their wake.
This is a curious one and a slow-burner. It's definitely not (even intentionally) ridiculous like many other Japanese science fiction films, and nor is it a ray-gun shoot-'em-up adventure (although it has its fair share of action, particularly near the end). Rather, Before We Vanish, based on Tomohiro Maekawa's 2005 stage play Sanpo Suru Shrinyakusha, is part science fiction mystery, part family drama, part psychological thriller, part coming-of-age story. Think Arrival meets The Sixth Sense meets Super 8 and you're on the right track. Yet director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) and his co-writer Sachiko Tanaka still mold these greatly different narrative plotlines and themes into a cohesive and intriguing whole; it's slow but genuinely stimulating. If I am honest I don't actually know quite how I feel about it, but it's definitely thought-provoking because I am still contemplating it a few hours later as I sit here writing this review.
The visual effects are refreshingly understated even in the climactic explosion scenes, with the sound design being consistently crisp and authentic, and the production design stands out because of how effectively it uses and contrasts rural and urban Japanese settings alongside the science fiction elements. Kurosawa also draws fine turns from his cast, with Tsunematsu and Nagasawa being particularly strong. Before We Vanish may have you scratching your head as it did for me, but if you approach it expecting a more cerebral and slow-paced kind of SF movie from the East, it should be worth your while. 8/10.
The visual effects are refreshingly understated even in the climactic explosion scenes, with the sound design being consistently crisp and authentic, and the production design stands out because of how effectively it uses and contrasts rural and urban Japanese settings alongside the science fiction elements. Kurosawa also draws fine turns from his cast, with Tsunematsu and Nagasawa being particularly strong. Before We Vanish may have you scratching your head as it did for me, but if you approach it expecting a more cerebral and slow-paced kind of SF movie from the East, it should be worth your while. 8/10.
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