On a day like any other, after killing her family in a very gruesome way, a high school girl roams the streets with a grin on her face, not caring about the accidents she causes on her path. A talented illustrator gets called when her husband is found walking aimlessly on the streets in an almost amnesic state, and with close to no social skills to communicate. A reporter looking for clues about the murdered family gets shocked when a young man ask him to be his guide, and shares with him that humanity’s days are numbered, since he is part of a scouting party setting the stage for an alien invasion.
From the hand of Kiyoshi Kurosawa (director of «Cure», «Pulse» and «Doppelganger» among other films) comes «Before We Vanish» a Japanese drama film with tones of science fiction that makes us wonder if humanity should be allowed to continue on the planet for a little longer, or if it is time to be erased and replaced for another type of intelligent life form.
While the idea of a group of aliens taking the bodies of humans to learn about our civilization (and how to destroy us) is nothing that we haven’t see before, the different personalities of these visitors and their approach in order to analyze humans is what makes the film interesting and worth watching. Far from infiltrating high rank personnel and look for ways to destroy us with our own weapons, these invaders go around stealing «Concepts» from the minds of the people they meet in their daily lives, causing a severe change in the personalities of those persons, some even ending in a mental breakdown.