Before We Vanish

Lore & Background

The film follows three aliens who take human forms as scouts for a mass invasion. One alien, appearing as a schoolgirl named Akira (Yuri Tsunematsu), kills her family and walks into traffic. Another alien inhabits Shinji (Ryuhei Matsuda), whose wife Narumi (Masami Nagasawa) becomes his guide. A third alien, Amano (Mahiro Takasugi), connects with journalist Sakurai (Hiroki Hasegawa). The aliens steal philosophical concepts from humans—such as "freedom," "family," and "possession"—leaving their victims unable to understand those ideas. Government authorities claim Akira spreads a dangerous virus, and a state of emergency is declared. The aliens must meet to trigger the invasion, which ultimately begins but is called off after the aliens learn from humans.

Reader's Guide

Before We Vanish is significant for its unique premise: aliens who steal abstract concepts from humans to understand them. The film received mixed to positive reviews, with a 79% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 64 on Metacritic. Critics praised Kiyoshi Kurosawa's direction and the film's thoughtful exploration of human emotion, though some noted its 130-minute runtime felt overlong and that character motivations were sometimes unclear. The film won an award at the Sitges Film Festival – Official Selection. A spin-off, Foreboding, was released in Japan on 11 November 2017. The film's legacy includes its commentary on human problems and the idea that the invasion inadvertently resolved some of those issues.

Did You Know?

• Filming took place in Ibaraki, Tochigi, Saitama, Shizuoka, and Kanagawa Prefectures, including an abandoned factory and a Kirin Beer factory.
• The original soundtrack album was released on 6 September 2017 by Pony Canyon and contains 26 songs.
• A spin-off titled Foreboding was released in Japanese theaters on 11 November 2017.

Plot & Philosophical Premise

The film follows three alien scouts who infiltrate Earth by inhabiting human bodies rather than attacking outright. Their method is subtler and stranger: they steal abstract concepts—freedom, family, possession, love—from the people around them, leaving those humans unable to comprehend what was taken. Akira, a schoolgirl who appears to kill her family and then carelessly causes a semi-truck to overturn, is the most violent of the trio. Shinji, a man whose wife Narumi notices a profound shift in his personality, becomes a better husband to her while admitting he is broken and intends to rebuild him. Amano, a teenager, bonds with freelance journalist Sakurai, who eventually believes his confession and assists him. The aliens are scouts for a mass invasion, and their mission is to understand how humans live and think. The story culminates when Narumi offers Shinji the concept of love, overwhelming him with its complexity. The invasion is ultimately called off because the aliens learned from humans, though the aftermath leaves lasting physical and mental damage to those who lost their core concepts, with no clear cure in sight.

Production & Visual Language

Principal photography ran from late July through August 2016 across five prefectures: Ibaraki, Tochigi, Saitama, Shizuoka, and Kanagawa. In Tochigi, the crew repurposed an abandoned factory as the survival-game set appearing in the film's closing sequence, while a Kirin Beer factory served as a wasteland backdrop in late August 2016. The couple's home was shot on location, and production designer Ataka Norifumi deliberately filled the interior with diagonal lines and shapes to visually encode the awkwardness between Narumi and Shinji. He also stripped warmer color tones from the palette so the audience could register the couple's low emotional energy. Behind the camera, Director of Photography Akiko Ashizawa chose to shoot on an Arri Alexa XT Plus paired with anamorphic lenses, lending the frames a distinctive widescreen quality. The original soundtrack, comprising 26 tracks, was released on 6 September 2017 through the Pony Canyon label.

Critical Reception & Festival Run

The film debuted in competition at the Un Certain Regard section of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival on 21 May 2017, and also received an award at the Sitges Film Festival's Official Selection. At home it earned two nominations at the 41st Japanese Academy Film Prize. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 79 percent approval rating across 48 reviews with an average score of 6.48 out of 10, while Metacritic tallies a 64 out of 100 from 14 critics, signaling generally favorable reception. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus praised Kurosawa for using established genre conventions to deliver a poignant, surprisingly sincere look at the human condition. Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter offered a sharper critique, arguing the film scrambles across sci-fi pastiche, quirky rom-com, and apocalyptic thriller without committing to a single mode, and that its runtime outstrips what the plot demands. He flagged unexplained character motivations and late-arriving action set pieces. In Japan the film grossed $448,829 over its opening weekend.

Source Material & Cast

Before We Vanish originated not as a screenplay but as a stage play by Tomohiro Maekawa's Ikiume Theatre Company, with Maekawa also penning the novel adaptation from which the film drew its narrative. Kiyoshi Kurosawa directed the 2017 screen version, bringing the story to a wider theatrical audience. The cast features Masami Nagasawa as Narumi, the wife whose husband is overtaken by an alien; Ryuhei Matsuda as Shinji, the man whose body the alien inhabits; Mahiro Takasugi as Amano, the teenage alien who befriends journalist Sakurai; Yuri Tsunematsu as Akira, the schoolgirl alien; and Hiroki Hasegawa as Sakurai, the freelance reporter who becomes Amano's guide. The Japanese title, Sanpo Suru Shinryakusha, translates literally as Strolling Invaders, a phrase that captures the film's central image of aliens wandering through ordinary human life with unsettling casualness. The film received its Japanese theatrical release on 9 September 2017.