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Last year I went on a long series of tirades against the movie Smile. I ranted that I hated the film for disgustingly depicting suicide for fun and trauma as an impossible to survive burden. I may have gone a bit too far but I hold to my central point. That movie is deeply nihilistic and upsetting for it.

I bring it up because every film has an opposite and I found Smile’s opposite in what is depending on your perspective an unlikely or obvious place. Godzilla Minus One is a film which also stares down the idea of trauma in a heightened supernatural setting. It takes a wildly different approach though. In this movie, trauma is a thing to be healed and recovered from. It’s a deeply life affirming film. And it’s also a killer Godzilla movie.

The film is set in the “minus one” period in Japan, the years after the war when the country was set back further than before the war. Arguably it’s a metaphor for Japan post-pandemic as some see it. Perhaps. It’s also been argued Godzilla is a metaphor for WWII with Japan getting to win this time. It doesn’t matter what it symbolizes. The movie is gripping on just this surface idea: How much damage can Godzilla do to a country already destroyed?

The movie focuses on Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a failed kamikaze pilot haunted by his cowardice first in being unable to perform his duty followed by an inability to fire on Godzilla during an attack. He returns home and through complicated circumstances forms an adopted family with Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe), who he loves but can’t tell, and Akiko (Sae Nagatani), their adopted daughter. Shikishima gets a job working as a minesweeper and rebuilds his life.

And then Godzilla attacks Japan. The plot inevitably follows a team assembling to stop Godzilla. There’s a ludicrous plan to kill him. There’s serious destruction. You know the drill. It’s a Godzilla movie.

The thing is, this is a Godzilla movie you leave thinking less about Godzilla and more about the humans. There’s long been the misconception that humans don’t matter in kaiju movies and this proves how untrue that is.* Shikishima is a great hero, haunted by guilt and his inability to let go of the war. He’s surrounded by great characters from his family and neighbors to his coworkers. I particularly liked Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), the other survivor of the first attack who hates Shikishima and comes to believe in him. All the actors are phenomenal here.

The movie uses these characters to ask a question: Is it nobler to die with honor or to live on? The film argues forcefully that living is the heroic act. It takes strength to rebuild from trauma. I compared this film to Smile and I think the key difference is writer/director Takashi Yamazaki actually thought the metaphor through where there was no such thought on Smile. This idea penetrates every frame of the film and it’s truly well handled. When the movie reached a highly unrealistic but also satisfying ending, I felt refreshed by the profound optimism this film expressed. I hate nihilism in art and this was so far from it.

But yeah, it is a Godzilla movie. I’ll be blunt. This is the best looking Godzilla movie yet. The effects are dynamite. The budget for this was reportedly under $15 million yet it looks twenty times that good. Godzilla looks utterly terrifying and wholly real while his destruction is jaw dropping. The west often mocked the previous films for weak effects but I saw this on a giant screen and it blew every spectacle I’ve seen since COVID started away.

The film also has the advantage of being a straight take on the formula from 1954, 1984, as well as 2016’s Shin Godzilla. It’s simply Godzilla attacks. The thing is that formula is as airtight as it gets. All of those movies are great. So is this. It’s a solid plot that in this case owes much to Jaws but understands that the primal terror of that film is nature being so unstoppable you can’t succeed against it. Yamazaki nails the execution.

Godzilla Minus One is a truly great film. Marrying both a great giant monster film and a gripping plot, the film is a full cinematic meal where a decent snack would have been fine. It’s in my opinion the absolute best film since the pandemic.

*Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm prove this is untrue and the fact that I don’t need to identify what they’re from is proof.

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Watch the trailer right here.

All images via Toho.

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Directed by Takashi Yamazaki
Screenplay by Takashi Yamazaki
Produced by Minami Ichikawa, Kazuaki Kishida, Keiichiro Moriya, Kenji Yamada
Starring Ryonosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Toshioka, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki
Release Date: November 3, 2023 (Japan)
Running Time: 125 minutes