Godzilla Minus One Review: Embracing Our Own Demons, No Spoilers

What if we accepted that we are responsible for our own destruction? What if, instead of running away, we embraced our own demons? Because the easy road is always the other one... the massacres, the violence, the annihilation, all of it has to be someone else's fault: they provoked us, they don't understand us, they hate us. And as long as we keep pointing outward, the monster keeps growing inside, with nobody brave enough to look it in the eye.

That's the question Godzilla Minus One brought to theaters, the 33rd Japanese film starring the King of the Monsters, written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki (who also supervised the visual effects) and produced by Toho, a story about humanity's very first encounter with this relentless creature within its own universe. By the time I wrote these lines it had already become the most successful Japanese Godzilla film to date, and with its sequel, Godzilla Minus Zero, hitting North American theaters on November 6, there's no better time to go back to it. Join me for this spoiler-free review.

Before The Roar

The story kicks off almost immediately after the end of World War II, and even though we've seen plenty of productions set in that same era, we had never seen one like this. Godzilla Minus One doesn't go for the military or political angle the genre has trained us to expect, with generals hunched over maps and politicians arguing behind closed doors. Instead it focuses on people, on how even after the crisis, the suffering and the annihilation, human beings can be kind and irritable at the same time. You can curse at others and, that same day, reach out a hand to pull them out of their darkest corners, and the film understands that this contradiction is also part of surviving.

We follow Kōichi Shikishima (Ryūnosuke Kamiki), a war survivor who returns to his hometown, flattened by the bombings, carrying a trauma left by a disaster that happened before the conflict ended. Along the way he has to learn to carry that weight, to keep living even when he isn't quite sure how, and to show us that the hope of changing things from inside your own head can make a real difference in the world, or at least in the world of the people closest to you.

We'll see cities, families and minds torn to pieces, but it isn't all bleak, because there's also hope, new life, kindness and forgiveness... until Godzilla shows up, of course.

You Ask, You Get

What do you expect from a giant monster movie? Exactly, whatever you're picturing right now, you get it. No extra complications: the plot is built so your favorite nuclear lizard can stand out, and every time he appears, the film knows the screen belongs to him and no one else.

But it doesn't settle for just showing you that. It gives you enough background to understand why his presence is so devastating, not only physically but mentally, because for a country that has already lost everything, watching something like this arrive feels like the war coming back with teeth. On top of that, it shows you, quickly and simply, how human beings use science to face a force of nature they don't understand, without throwing a mess of nonsense explanations or magic technology out of nowhere at you.

You won't find loose ends, Mary Sue characters who fix everything, or even the lone-hero story where one guy saves the world all by himself. What you find is a simple story about life, the kind that could absolutely happen if a creature like Godzilla walked this earth, and that's exactly why it squeezes your chest instead of just impressing you.

Fifteen Million, Zero Excuses

It's 125 minutes of pure entertainment, full of emotion, laughter, uncertainty, fear and awe, and the film proves that when there's love for the story you can get the audience to empathize with the characters and feel part of what's happening from their seat. I said it before with Everything Everywhere All at Once, my favorite of 2023 and the Best Picture winner, and it's confirmed once again here: you don't need a fortune to move people, you need to know what you want to say.

We're talking about a production of roughly 15 million dollars, a fraction of what any Hollywood blockbuster costs, and with that in mind the love for detail shows everywhere, in the performances, in the sets and, above all, in the Godzilla model. You won't see cutting-edge effects in every shot, but you'll clearly see how they squeezed every single dollar, to the point of beating, in several moments, what other productions achieve with the most expensive CGI around. And it's not just me saying it: over time, the film took home the Oscar for Best Visual Effects over Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Mission: Impossible, Dead Reckoning Part One, becoming the first Godzilla film ever to win it, something nobody had managed in seventy years of roars.

Real Boats, Real Fear

The creativity behind the limitations is endlessly satisfying. Setting the film right after the devastation of the war is even more admirable, because it lets you play with the budget: the sets don't need to look perfect or clean, they need to look broken, and broken is built out of rubble, burnt wood and ash. Add the scenes at sea, where Godzilla comes from, with real boats in the water, shot from the air and, boom, the magic kicks in, because between scale models and flawless cinematography you feel the King of the Monsters' gaze stalking you from below, like when you swim in deep water and can't see the bottom.

And at just the right moments the film's sparse CGI shows up, only when it's needed, no more, no less. Relentless, enormous, like a force of nature born from a mythological creature... hold on to your seat, because if there's one thing Japan does better than anyone, it's blending a gripping drama with action that knows no limits, and here it does it with a fraction of the resources and twice the intent.

Mind And Heart First

Imagine if the people themselves could take charge of their actions, their emotions and their lives. Throughout the film you understand that people know exactly what their demons are, and that the only way to fight them is together, without waiting for someone from above to come down and rescue them. And that's where the opening question returns, because once you stop blaming others and look straight at what you're carrying, only then can you do something about it.

Building a story where what matters is your mind and your heart, before institutions and rules, is something we had already seen in Japanese anime, in Studio Ghibli's films or in more recent works like Your Name and Suzume, where before and after matter less than the now. And the now is what matters most, it's our present, the gift life gives us. Godzilla Minus One carries that same idea into live action, with a monster the size of a building standing in front of you to remind you that the present can be lost too.

The King's Score

Worthy of the highest honors in film, the music here is unmatched. Naoki Satō delivers original pieces that bring out the best in every scene, from the moments of calm, learning or sadness to the ones full of destruction, irreverence and, of course, monstrous devastation. There are themes that hold you gently when the film stops to breathe with its characters, and others that hit your chest as if every one of Godzilla's steps were echoing inside the theater.

Trust me, you'll be on the edge of your seat in every scene, in every shot, and that comes down to many things, but mostly to the auditory marvel this film is. The music doesn't tell you what to feel, it stays with you while you feel it, and that difference is what separates a good soundtrack from one that gets burned into your fan muscle memory.

A Theater Holding Its Breath

It had been a long time since I'd been at a movie that truly entertained, I mean one that had the entire theater reacting to every scene. There wasn't a single minute without laughter, gasps, whispers and the occasional jump in someone's seat, and everyone was locked in on what would happen next. The story is simple, but it opens the door to the most complex parts of being human and to our resilience in the face of things we can't control.

This is a film you absolutely have to see in theaters, because the sound, the score and the shared emotion are impossible to match in your living room. And even without it being in your language and relying completely on subtitles, you'll love it, since the dialogue is short and precise, letting you understand the situation more through the acting and the atmosphere than through what's actually said.

Godzilla can knock down an entire city in one night, but what's truly hard to rebuild is a person who has already given up on themselves, and nobody does that rebuilding for you. This is a yes to Godzilla Minus One, go and witness the power of the King of the Monsters. And now that Yamazaki returns with Minus Zero and a bigger budget, I only ask one thing: that the extra money doesn't take away what this film had to spare, the hunger to tell something human with the little it had in its hands.