A genre-bending alien invasion mashup of darkly comedic sci-fi and action spectacle, from the director of Japanese horror classic Pulse.

WRITER/DIRECTOR
Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, The Cure)

CAST
Masami Nagasawa (Your Name, Godzilla: Final Wars)
Ryûhei Matsuda (The Raid 2)
Hiroki Hasegawa (Shin Godzilla)
Kazuya Kojima (Guilty of Romance)

Three aliens on a reconnaissance mission to Earth take over the bodies of human hosts to explore the world they’re about to invade. On the way they steal individual concepts from the minds of anyone who crosses their path, from work, to free will, to love, leaving behind them a trail of soulless bodies.

The film follows Narumi, whose husband Shinji becomes one of the three hosts. As the invasion grows nearer, Narumi’s attempts to save humanity from extinction become increasingly entwined with Shinji’s decision on whether to save the humanity within himself.

Prolific Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse) returned to Cannes with this alien invasion movie with a difference, a deft mix of love story, blackly comic sci-fi and all out action. From its opening sequence - where a laughing, blood-splattered schoolgirl walks along a highway as a massive traffic pile-up takes place behind her - it is clear Before We Vanish is something spectacular, stylish, and very very different.

Combining the best of Kurosawa’s genre stylings with his forays into dark family dramas, Before We Vanish sees the director delivering a twist on the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers narrative by recontextualising it in the disconnected modern world.

Beautifully paced, and with a lavish score by Yûsuke Hayashi that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Spielberg’s lavish Hollywood sci-fi epics, the film presents a unique vision to how alien invasions have been portrayed in popular culture in the past, and asks the question, how much is humanity worth, if we’ve become too alienated to be able to recognise the aliens among us?

A thought-provoking, intelligent and witty examination of the human condition, this sits along recent sophisticated sci-fi films like Interstellar and Ex Machina, lingering long in the mind after viewing.

- FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Neil Mitchell
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
- Original 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
- Optional English subtitles
- The Making Of Before We Vanish, an 53-minute featurette including on-set footage and interviews with cast and crew
- Inside The Story and Inside The Characters, two featurettes with cast and crew interviews
- Looking Back, members of the cast reunite to discuss memories of the production
- Red carpet interviews from the Cannes Film Festival premiere
- Cast and crew Q&As from four screenings including the Japanese premiere
- Trailer
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tommy Pocket

Genre: Sci-fi
Language: Japanese
Subtitles: English
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Audio: 7.1 DTS-HD MA
Colour
Discs: 1