Godzilla Minus Zero is somehow even better than Minus One, and considering how much I loved that film, I did not think I would be saying that. What Takashi Yamazaki continues to understand is that Godzilla is about so much more than a giant monster destroying a city. This is a film about people trying to live through trauma. It’s about what happens after the war is supposedly over and everyone expects you to move on with your life. What happens when the buildings can be rebuilt but the people inside of them are still carrying everything that happened to them? That was one of the things that made Minus One so special, and Minus Zero takes those ideas even further. These characters survived a war. They survived Godzilla. Now they have to figure out what surviving actually means. There is so much pain underneath this story, but also this constant fight to build something resembling a normal life again. And I actually think the story here is even stronger than Minus One. Because we already know and care about these characters, Yamazaki is able to dig deeper into them rather than starting from scratch. The human drama never feels like something we have to sit through until Godzilla shows up again. It is the movie. But when Godzilla DOES show up… holy shit. The special effects are absolutely incredible. Minus One already looked better than movies that cost many times its budget, and somehow Minus Zero makes that movie look like the warm up. The scale is bigger, the destruction feels heavier and the detail in these sequences is insane. Godzilla feels enormous and genuinely terrifying. And yes, this movie absolutely earns its R rating. Yamazaki doesn’t suddenly turn Godzilla into a slasher movie or go overboard just because he can, but there is a brutality to the destruction here that makes everything hit harder. You feel what is happening to the people caught in the middle of it. The violence isn’t there simply for shock value. It reinforces the idea that these aren’t cool explosions happening in the background. People are living through another nightmare. The monster battles are also fantastic. I won’t spoil anything because these sequences deserve to be experienced without knowing where they’re going, but they are some of the most exciting and beautifully constructed kaiju action I’ve seen. They’re huge, they’re creative and there were multiple moments where I couldn’t believe what I was watching. That’s the balance Yamazaki gets so right. Godzilla Minus Zero can give you incredible monster battles and massive spectacle, but it never forgets the people standing underneath those monsters. This is a movie about Godzilla. But like the best Godzilla movies, it’s really about us. It’s about surviving something that should have destroyed you, carrying that trauma with you and somehow finding a reason to keep living afterward. I thought Godzilla Minus One was going to be almost impossible to top. Godzilla Minus Zero topped it. #NYFF64