Review of Suzume

tl;dr: Another iteration of the Shinkai formula, that has significantly messier writing but just as fantastic visuals and music. Suzume is the newest film from acclaimed director Shinkai Makoto. The background to the story is that there’s a great evil worm sealed in the great beyond, but there are various doors throughout Japan through which the evil can escape. The evil escaping triggers a natural disaster in the surrounding vicinity. There are two gods that act as keystones to keep these doors sealed, and a line of people known as the Closer are tasked with ensuring the seal remains intact and the doors remains shut. However, ahigh school girl named Suzume accidentally releases one of the keystones, thus allowing the evil to escape from doors all across Japan. Furthermore, said keystone turns into a cat and curses this generation’s Closer, Souta, by putting his soul into a chair Suzume has had from when she was a child. Thus, Suzume and Souta journey across Japan trying to recapture the keystone god and have him recreate the seal, while also closing any doors the evil is escaping through that they come across.

This film is very similar to Shinkai’s previous films Your Name and Weathering with You. It has a larger than life supernatural premise rooted in Japanese mythology but is still primarily focused on the bond between two individuals as they deal with it. It follows a similar trajectory, where the first half is pretty light hearted but things get much more intense in the second. There’s once again a focus on natural disaster’s, in this case Earthquakes, and how humanity deals with them. And once again there’s a single central motif rooted in a simple every day emotion, in this case the feeling of locking the door behind you. At this point, I think its pretty clear that Shinkai has a formula that he’s sticking to. And I certainly don’t think that that’s a bad thing.

However, I would have to say that compared to his previous two films, this is definitely a weaker execution of the formula. The biggest issue is that this film lacks a strong emotional core. This film explores Suzume’s relationship with her aunt who took her in after her mother died, and the guilt that Suzume feels for taking up so much of her life. It also deals with Suzume having lingering trauma from how abruptly she lost her mother and her coming to terms with that and moving past it. There’s also a romance between Suzume and Souta with Suzume’s feeling for Souta being one of her primary driving factors during the latter half of the film.

There’s a lot that the film is trying to do. But ultimately it doesn’t really feel like it did any of these all that well. Nothing really comes together properly. There isn’t really any single primary focus to the film, and as a result it doesn’t feel like anything was focused on enough. The film is still able to hit some strong emotional moments due to how great it is at portraying characters and their emotions. However, its not able to really resonate and get to the deeper level of emotional impact that Shinkai’s previous films have. And thus the final impression the film leaves is much weaker, resulting in a film that is far less satisfying and memorable.

The production values for the film are still unquestionably excellent as with previous Shinkai films. The art and animation are amazing and the film uses them for both incredibly large scale spectacles that bedazzle and smaller scale moments where more subtle elements come across incredibly well. The soundtrack is also still great, though I would put it below Your Name and Weathering with You.