BEFORE WE VANISH: Alien Invasion With A Twist

When a film begins with the aftermath of a gruesome dismemberment, you probably won’t expect too many laughs going forward. Yet Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s Before We Vanish proves that our expectations can be a bit too limiting; this idiosyncratic alien invasion saga immediately follows up the gory imagery of its opening moments with a ridiculous – and ridiculously funny – setpiece of car crashes and blissful ignorance.

Before We Vanish is a tricky film to experience, precisely because it feels as if it’s constantly slipping out of your grasp. It’s impossible to know how to feel about anything that’s happening even as you’re watching, as the film veers from inspired innovation to tedious repetition within the blink of an eye. It’s impeccably crafted by director/co-writer Kurosawa, but it’s a story that appears to go around in circles at a snail’s pace, never quite achieving the profundity it so desperately wants to reach.

After a series of jolts and sluggish detours, it even begins to feel as if the enigmatic appeal of this story is inextricably bound up with the unshakable frustration that comes with the territory. A confusing blend of feelings is sure to emerge for every viewer, but nobody could accuse the film of being anything less than memorable.

Earth’s Demise is Imminent

The film begins with a scene straight out of a 1950s sci-fi movie, only with much bloodier results. A family has been viciously killed, and there’s a young girl covered in blood at the scene. When she licks the blood off her fingers and merrily walks away, it’s clear something is up: the girl is Akira Tachibana (Yuri Tsunematsu), and she’s one of three aliens to crash land on Earth.

Moments later, Shinji Kase (Ryû Matsuda) enters the picture, and it’s clear that something is…. off. He stares ahead like a robot, and he seems to have no memory of who he is or what he did in the past. His wife, Narumi (Masami Nagasawa), believes he’s just sick, but it’s apparent that something more extraterrestrial is going on in Shinji’s brain. He’s possessed by the second alien, and Narumi is now his guide to explaining the rules and regulations of this new planet.

But what are the aliens doing here? What do they want? That’s where Amano (Mahiro Takasugi), the most eager and excitable of the aliens, comes in. Early in his travels, he comes in contact with Sakurai (Hiroki Hasegawa), a skeptical journalist who refuses to believe that he’s talking to a real life alien. But after a few strange occurrences and unexplained coincidences, Sakurai comes to understand the truth – that Amano and his colleagues really are here to invade this planet.

If Akira, Shinji, and Amano contact each other, it could spell doom. But does humanity care enough to stop it?

Somewhere Between Pathos and Absurdity

On a visual level, there’s little to separate the aliens from the humans, beyond their naturally distant and icy demeanor. Yet these invaders do have a special power, which is the ability to extract mental conceptions from their human victims. Say you have a good mental picture of “family,” or you can come up with an explicit idea of what “work” looks like. These aliens, in their quest to greater understand the human race, will take that from you with a bit of impromptu hypnosis and an out-of-this-world maneuver.

It’s a bit like the “Learninggggggg” scene from X-Men: Apocalypse, only a little more frightening.

This extraterrestrial attempt at understanding human emotion through a series of concepts is a clever idea, though it begins to feel more and more obvious as the story progresses. With the bulk of the film’s social commentary riding on an outsider’s futile search for the conceptualization of human law and order, it’s tough to know where the insightful jabs end and the corny missteps begin. If I had to choose a point where my skepticism increased, I would likely point toward the film’s use of “love” as an overarching limitation to alien understanding, even leaning into this distinction near the finale.

Yes, Kurosawa and co-writer Sachiko Tanaka are able to infuse a bizarre sense of dread into the romantic core of the endeavor, but the insight feels muddled and unclear, implying something ambiguous without completely dealing with the ramifications.

A Memorable Endurance Test

Beyond the sometimes shaky social critique, the unnecessarily lengthy runtime stands as Before We Vanish‘s most daunting obstacle, which is a bit shocking when you consider that it’s only 130 minutes long. We’re not talking about Lawrence of Arabia here – this is a film where methodical storytelling and frequent repetitions bog down an interesting concept and alluring compositions. At many points, Before We Vanish left me restless, wondering why everything felt so needlessly drawn out, so elaborately extended beyond any level of functionality.

But through it all, Kurosawa delivers such a tonally strange concoction that it’s virtually impossible not to be drawn back in. The soundtrack is perhaps most emblematic of the signature weirdness on display, oscillating between dramatic, 1950s-style sci-fi scoring and bursts of music that sound downright Fellini-esque. The film is simultaneously epic in its sense of potential planetary annihilation and extremely precise in its focus on these characters; their fears, their doubts of human worthiness, their unusual relationships with each other. And even if it’s a fairly quiet and understated affair, Kurosawa doesn’t shy away from unflinching bursts of violence – the alien occupying Akira’s body seems to like mowing down adversaries at any moment.

Before We Vanish: Conclusion

Make no mistake, the journey to get to the apex of this invasion is long and meandering, in a way that will confound even if you’ve acclimated to the leisurely pace. Yet by the time the credits rolled, I felt that I’d seen something I wouldn’t soon forget. Before We Vanish is always working in two dimensions at the same time: it’s gross and funny, incisive as a work of modern commentary and blunt as a dozen hammers, formally compelling and yet still stuck in a tiresome loop of its own creation. But as soon as Kurosawa enters a mode of alternatively fatalistic and optimistic philosophizing, this alien invasion hits an unexpected peak.

Is the end result worth the journey? I’m not sure. But you almost owe it to yourself to take the ride.

What did you think of Before We Vanish? Are you a fan of director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s work? Let us know in the comments below!

Before We Vanish will be released on home video on February 11th. For full international release information, click here.