When everyone praises a movie or show overwhelmingly, I’m always wary about it. Will it actually live up to the hype, or is it just a fad that people will forget about soon enough?

With Godzilla Minus One, the reality is that it’s every bit as good as it’s been made out to be. It was something I didn’t pay much attention to in late 2023 when it hit theatres, but the more I heard about it, the more I regretted not seeing it before its run ended. So when it arrived on Netflix by the back door, I couldn’t wait to see it, and now I have, I can say it’s an excellent watch.

The story is set in Japan at the end of World War Two and its aftermath. Our hero Koichi is a Kamikaze pilot in the last days of the war who feigns mechanical problems with his plane and lands at an airfield to prevent having to go on his suicide mission. At night, Godzilla attacks the airfield, when Koichi’s told to use his fighter’s guns to shoot the monster, he freezes in terror, allowing all but one of his comrades to die as a result. He returns home to find Tokyo in ruins and his parents dead. With his life in pieces, he crosses the path of a young girl caring for an orphaned child and together they try to find a reason to survive in this desperate world.

Unlike certain Monsterverse movies made by Legendary Pictures, the characters are the real focus of the story here, and it’s the right choice, as all of them are realised perfectly. Seeing them living in the rubble of Tokyo is by turns heartbreaking and heartwarming, as we see them struggle to find the basics, before managing to rebuild a life out of the dust and debris, showing the strength of the human spirit. It’s a sharp contrast to, say, Godzilla x Kong, where the characters are just cardboard exposition machines.

It’s also notable that Godzilla isn’t the main focus here or made out as the hero. He’s definitely a threat, not something that the characters have to find a way to coexist with, but a dangerous force of destruction that can level a city, and will do, with no reason or excuse.

It’s clear that setting it in this time period is more than just a plot device. Yes, it means that the Japanese military is drastically reduced following their defeat, and the building Cold War tensions prevent the Americans from giving them aid, but it’s also improtant to show the country as it was after the defeat, trying to find its way after such a terryifing, devastating, and ultimately pointless war where lives were traded cheaply and no one felt worth anything, and there are clear criticisms of the government. In many ways, Godzilla doesn’t feel like a strange sci-fi anomaly, but just another terrible thing for them to overcome, a further sink into the depths when they feel they have suffered as much as possible.

A lot of talk goes on how good the effects are, and not just for a low budget movie, which they undoubtedly are, but also for their clear brilliance. In many ways they outshine anything done by Holloywood recenly. Godzilla has weight and mass, you can actually feel him lumbering along as he crashes through the city, and his heat ray breath is sparingly used, clearly requiring a lot of effort on his part. There are also clear references to Spielberg movies like Jurassic Park included here and there in his attacks. The ultimate solution to the monster is also more real, rather than the pseudoscience of the Monsterverse, as bright minds try to think of a solution to the crisis as things get desperate, with a genuine feeling it could a end in failure.

I’ll be honest, I dont have much of a knowledge of international cinema, but you can see the difference here between the current crop of movies coming from the major studios. It has classic character types and plot devices, theres aso something that might be particularly Japanese in the emotional display of the performances, and it has an ending that would probably be considered too perfect today. But it works, and it’s a genuine joy to see a movie that isn’t full of quippy humour spoiling every emotional moment.

Godzilla Minus One is a movie with both brains and heart, that entirely believes in itself and never feels the need to be self-referential. It deserves every bit of praise it gets.