Though the outer space creatures visiting Earth in Before We go away can dwell the bodies of gay sapiens , they do n’t live what it think of to be human . But the more they learn about it , the closer we get to maybe becoming extinct .
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Before We vaporize does n’t seek to replicate the limited effects extravaganzas hear in most alien clash film . Instead , it tackles the dubiousness that most film — and mass — take for grant . The pic starts with two big shocks , the first in the form of an elderly couple ’s gorily dismembered body . The 2d shock is more personal , when Narumi Kase ( Masami Nagasawa ) learns that her missing husband , Shinji ( Ryuhei Matsuda ) , has been found after a week , but he does n’t seem to know anything about anything . When it seems like Shinji ca n’t think back his unfaithfulness that make the couple to drift apart , Narumi thinks it ’s a ploy to avoid angry reprisals from her .
However , it soon becomes apparent that Shinji does n’t hump the most introductory information about living life . That ’s because his body is now home to an extraterrestrial who did n’t antecedently have a strong-arm form . This creature — along with two others who have been taken over the body of a teenage son and girl — has been tasked with pulling cognition from human brains in approach of a mass invasion . So when Shinju come to his finger to the forehead of a aim studio apartment exec to harvest the musical theme of work , all of that import leave the man ’s brain all . The hapless White House gallumphs across desks pass water paper airplanes from blueprint and smash intricate model of noted construction . He does n’t know how to cultivate any longer .
It ’s impressive how nakedly experiential Before We disappear is . Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa revolves his film around foundational questions that most adults have take root on answers for , like , “ Who am I ? What is dearest ? Why do we oppose wars ? What is dimension ? ” Much of Before We go away plays as a comedy and the film coalesce quirkiness and tenseness well . Yet , even as you ’re express joy at the nihilistic jinks of the teenager foreigner , you sit in a sense of creeping dread as they near the windup of their mission . There ’s something horrible about learn them rob unsuspecting humans of full of life concepts after goad them to load up mind in their head . When a human falls to their knee after an alien allude their forehead , you know that they ’ve permanently lost a piece of the knowledge that made them who they are .
After she set forth off require the older version of her treasonable married man back , Narumi wants to keep this fresh Shinji . He ’s kinder , gentler , and more open to experiences the old him had write off . A cranky newsman mention Sakurai ( Hiroki Hasegawa ) finds himself orbiting the alien in a teenaged manlike body , tethered by a mix of careerist scoop hungriness , ghoulish fascination , and ornery bitterness . The aliens refer to both Narumi and Sakurai as their guides to humanity ’s cognitive wilderness but the two humans enwrap up in this topsy-turvyness recover their loyalties challenged . Sakurai spends much of the movie test to get the great unwashed — including himself — to believe that the alien intrusion threat is real . While she ’s also butt on header with the government agency trying to bottle up the verity , Narumi is taste to figure out a routine with this weird , naive Shinji variant in her life .
Kurosawa ’s film juggles bursts of poignant emotion , sudden violence , and frenzied comedy with easiness . It ’s fun to see , even more so because it ’s contrive to make you think . Before We Vanish is evocative of Invasion of the Body Snatchers but , here , the organizing vexation is deep existential inquiring , not cold war paranoia . It makes viewers interrogate how the expectations and relationships we have with others delineate our sense of self and how we re - orient that gumption of self when the citizenry around us go through striking change . The extraterrestrials come up to Earth to immerse noesis and discard flesh but what they go through changed them , too .
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