‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ review: Towering monster sequel amps up the action and raises the emotional stakes

Dir/scr: Takashi Yamazaki. Japan. 2026. 135mins 

A devastating and heartbreaking kaiju movie, Godzilla Minus Zero is a towering epic of destructive proportions. It intimately concerns the Shikishima family, who we last saw engaged in a near-death battle with Godzilla in 2023’s Godzilla Minus One. Their attempts to reuild their lives is interrupted when the giant, dragon-like King Ghidorah emerges from a meteorite to lay siege to Japan. Hoping to once again save their country from a rampaging kaiju, the family re-teams with naval engineer Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) to combine science and grit in a traumatic fight for survival. A sprawling piece of sincere blockbuster entertainment, this film provides real human stakes without sacrificing larger-than-life monster brawls. 

A deeply felt human story that’s perfectly balanced with the film’s blockbuster aims

Godzilla Minus Zero is a massive triumph for writer/director Takashi Yamazaki. Premiering at New York Film Festival, the sequel comes on the heels of the successful Godzilla Minus One (which took $114m worldwide and won multiple awards including an Oscar for best visual effects), which helped re-establish the kaiju’s decades long cultural pull. This sequel, which is filmed for IMAX, isn’t merely a worthy follow-up. It’s a thrilling extension of a popular franchise whose graphic artistry, urgent geopolitical themes, and super-charged kaijus make it likely to replicating the achievements of its predecessor when it releases in Japan on November 3 and the US and UK on Nov 6. 

It’s 1949, two years after Godzilla’s city-leveling attack on Ginza in the first film. Former kamikzee pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) regularly picks up his daughter Akiko (Sae Nagatani) from her daycare, which is filled with children orphaned by Godzilla and the second world war, and goes home to his wife Noriko (Minami Hamabe). With an eyepatch covering her right eye and bandages on her shoulder, Noriko is still recovering from her near-fatal encounter with the kaiju. The trio dutifully live with their emotional and physical scars, fearing any encroaching rumble under their feet with a dread not uncommon to atomic bomb survivors.  

The psychological toll of war further takes shape with the appearance of Ghidorah, a flying hydra who is canonically Godzilla’s archenemy. In the film’s heart-pounding opening, Kanji Murakami (Min Tanaka), who carries his own ghosts from the past evades the attacking Ghidorah as it careens through the disintegrating streets of Matsumoto City. This new threat forces Noda and the keen meteorologist Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa) to confront their prior wartime sins in a bid to stop this new kaiju. 

There’s a plethora of spoilers that arise beyond the film’s potent set-up, but one obvious truth is that Godzilla does return in this sequel – bigger and badder than ever. Similarly, the VFX rendering of both Godzilla and Ghidorah is somehow even more impressive than the prior film. Naoki Satō’s seismic score also rises to the challenge, shaking the frame with colossal horns and booming percussion that build with a Jaws-esque intensity. The major set pieces are, at times, gravity defying, acrobatic displays of national grief contained in kaiju haymakers. 

Each building destroyed, each human death conjures wartime anxieties – especially since Ghidorah’s apocalyptic emergence from an incoming projectile recalls the continued ripple effect of the atomic bomb. The traumatized Shikishima family seriously considers whether they ae capable of facing more conflict. The occupying American military force brings further reminders of the country’s collective loss. Every character carries the weight of warfare with them via harrowing flashbacks and a desire to stop the cycles of violence in the hopes of finding permanent peace. 

Yamazaki’s emotional script relies on extreme melodrama to translate those dreams and nightmares into a deeply felt human story that’s perfectly balanced with the film’s blockbuster aims. Kamiki and Hamabe give especially charged performances, connecting their characters’ emotions with the thematic importance of family in a country whose bonds and kin have disappeared overnight. With Kamiki and Hamabe complimenting Yamazaki’s unyielding vision, the stakes feel higher, the kaiju appear taller, and Godzilla Minus Zero roars with immeasurable force.