We come to the end of yet another Horrortoberfest and I saved a movie I’ve been dying to see for a while to watch as my last film of the season. Now, I am not a die hard Godzilla fan and didn’t particularly care for the much lauded Shin Godzilla but everything I had heard about this movie made me think that this would be an entry that I would be into. The trick with any kaiju movie is making the human story not be boring filler where you are just waiting patiently for the giant monster to show back up and I heard the human story in this was the best part.

In the final days of World War II, Kōichi Shikishima lands his plane on Odo Island for repairs. He is a kamikaze pilot but didn’t sacrifice himself due to “technical issues” with the plane but the engineers can’t find any issue with it. While there, the island is attacked by Godzilla, a much smaller version but still monstrous, and Shikishima is too scared to shoot it with his plane’s guns. The attack leaves everyone but him and one engineer dead. Now full of shame for both his lack of conviction as a kamikaze and his inability to fight Godzilla, Shikishima heads home to a Tokyo in ruins and attempts to rebuild his life. He accidentally ends up taking in Noriko, a woman who lost her parents in the bombing and is taking care of an orphaned baby, Akiko. As his life starts to return to a semblance of normalcy, the monster from his nightmares returns, larger than ever before.

I love that when I told my friends I was doing this as my final movie they said “Godzilla isn’t horror” but that first scene on Odo Island is an absolutely perfect monster horror scene. It’s also neat to not only have Godzilla show up that early in the film but also get the tiny, non-irradiated version of him. Having him represent the guilt and trauma of being in war that starts out monstrous but only grows until it is an all-consuming force of destruction isn’t subtle but is very well executed. I appreciate that while the heroes of the movie end up being war veterans, the movie is anything but pro-war or glorifying soldiers. It constantly talks about how anyone that managed to not go to war was insanely lucky and how the government threw their lives away and treated them as disposable resources. The veterans can only save the day in the movie once they are acting as civilians coming together to protect their homes rather than soldiers fighting for the government.

As promised, the human story in this is great. I don’t mind saying I teared up at a few points during this because you just really want Shikishima to catch a fucking break at some point. All the side characters are good and you get invested in their story such that you aren’t merely politely waiting for Godzilla to show up but kind of dreading when he does because you know he will absolutely wreck their shit. It’s also fun to watch our heroes try to take on Godzilla with only technology and resources that they would have in 1947 Japan and not having any super science MacGuffins like mecha or laser rockets or whatever. Everything feels so grounded and emotionally real that having a giant lizard monster stomp around a major metropolitan area doesn’t take away from the drama sucks you in.

This is everything I hoped it would be and more. This has certainly become my new favorite Godzilla movie.

Score: 5 out of 5