Review: Godzilla Minus Zero

If Godzilla Minus One was a movie about Japan struggling to come to terms with the cost of World War 2 - with a giant radioactive monster serving as a living metaphor for all manner of horrors - then Godzilla Minus Zero is about Japan and its people learning to deal with the fact that those horrors aren't going away. Here the trauma is generational and ongoing; if that wasn't enough, there are also more monsters.

Much of the fun here comes from the way the story unfolds, so to keep things vague: after the events of Godzilla Minus One, you'd think Japan was in for a much-deserved break from giant monster attacks. But no! So the surviving heroes from the previous film - most notably former kamikaze pilot Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki), his now-wife Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and weapons designer Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) - are reunited in an attempt to tackle a foe who turns out to be even more persistent and adaptable than Godzilla.

This monster-first approach means initially it seems like this is moving beyond the angst and human drama that made the previous film so powerful. But no! The guilt, suffering, and post traumatic stress that haunted the human characters is still lurking under the surface. When combined with the carnage and destruction that inevitably follows a kaiju attack, there are some very clear parallels with the destruction Japan faced at the end of WWII even before a character reveals he was at Hiroshima.

All of which is to say that after a relatively low-key start this builds both dramatically and emotionally until - much like the battered cities of Japan - the audience is repeatedly pummeled by emotions you wouldn't usually expect from a movie featuring giant monsters. Massive destruction is par for the course; it's the suffering that individuals go through that stays with you.

There's still plenty of quality monster movie action here. The post-war level of tech requires some fairly ramshackle large scale traps from the humans, which results in some gripping sequences - everything has to go right and there are a lot of things that can go wrong. 

The scenes of monster devastation are both thrilling and appalling, escalating throughout the film until it's a wonder there's anything left standing in Japan. And there are a few decent digs in at the Americans here too; the way the US donate a bunch of up-to-date equipment then make sure they won't be connected to any of it if it fails is a nice bit of cynicism.

The last few Godzilla movies out of Japan have been a revelation. Authentically horrifying in parts while never neglecting the human side of the story (even if Shin Godzilla was as much a satire as anything), they're restored awe and terror to a genre once mocked as men in rubber suits. As a worthy successor to, and continuation of, Godzilla Minus One - an Oscar winner, no less - this is one not to be missed.

- Anthony Morris