Day of the Kaiju (2014)

Proto-Shin

If you enjoyed the boardroom meetings of Shin Godzilla, then Day of the Kaiju will serve as a perfect little companion piece to that film, a very bold and lower-budgeted precursor. It tackles very similar themes to that of Shin Godzilla, offering both a serious look at the political hurdles that would be involved with dealing with giant lifeforms and sharp allegorical rebukes toward the Japanese government's handling of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. One only needs to look at Kazuhiro Nakagawa's directing credentials and the film's wonderful direction starts to make sense. The acting is all solid and the minimal VFX is handled very well given the minuscule budget, accompanied by a very understated and wonderful piano score by Masaaki Sasaki, it's just a well-done short that I have next to no criticisms of, exceptionally solid if too short. All in all, Day of the Kaiju comes down to being a foundation piece for a much more expanded take on its premise, I could easily have seen this being expanded out into a TV show. If nothing else, it does highlight my waning love towards Shin Godzilla.

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