It stars Masami Nagasawa, Ryuhei Matsuda, Mahiro Takasugi, Yuri Tsunematsu, and Hiroki Hasegawa.

[5] An alien in the form of a schoolgirl named Akira (Yuri Tsunematsu) apparently kills her family, then walks carelessly down the middle of a street, causing an evading semi to overturn.

A second alien has taken over the body of a man, Shinji (Ryuhei Matsuda), whose wife Narumi (Masami Nagasawa) is flustered by the profound changes to his personality.

Government authorities are working to locate Akira, who they view as being at the center of a release of a dangerous virus.

Shinji was found to be working for the relief effort at the film's end while Narumi was hospitalized because she had lost the concept of love and all related emotions.

Production designer, Ataka Norifumi, said that he put many diagonal lines or shapes on the inside of the house on purpose so that it could imply the awkwardness between Narumi and Shinji.

[7] Akiko Ashizawa, Director of Photography, chose to shoot on Arri Alexa XT Plus with anamorphic lens.

The website's critical consensus states, "Before We Vanish finds Kiyoshi Kurosawa working within well-established genre guidelines to take a poignant, surprisingly sincere look at the human condition.

"[15] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score 64 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

[16] Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter said, "Perpetually shifting gear between playful sci-fi pastiche, quirky rom-com and apocalyptic thriller, Before We Vanish might have worked better as a single dedicated genre, but it becomes a little scrambled trying to cover several at once.

After all, they sum up the review with this sentence  “With the tonally incontinent Kurosawa at the helm, it is hard to tell which.” Meanwhile, Maggie Lee of Variety said, "Playing frequently like an absurdist political satire with only flashes of violence, this low-tension, drawn-out work won't gratify the chills or adrenaline rushes fanboys crave, but the ending strikes a romantic chord so pure that all but the most jaded cynics will be moved.

He started off saying that 130 minutes running time is too long considering the amount of character development and plots of Alien invasion drama.

However, he acclaimed Kurosawa’s direction for actors He pointed out that some people do not like the emotional flow happening in the movie, unnatural dialogue, lack of character development.

RogerEbert.com gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, commenting that "its naive hopefulness is infectious, and its big ideas are captivating.

Specifics mentioned were the uniqueness of the young girl covered by blood, and violent visual images that referred to 1950s Science Fiction.They said “This extraterrestrial attempt at understanding human emotion through a series of concepts is a clever idea.” The plot of the film went over the expectations that viewers have towards standard science fiction films featuring aliens.