Film Review: Suzume - A beautiful half-baked cake

Without a doubt, Suzume is a beautiful film. The animation is vibrant and colourful, each movement pulsates with energy (I have never seen an anthropomorphic chair animated so flawlessly) and satisfying sound design finishes the icing on this seemingly sumptuous cake. Yet, once cut into and portioned out, there is a distinct lack of delicious filling. Undercooked and unjustifiably gooey in places, this movie’s plot lines are confused and the character arcs empty.

The story follows a young schoolgirl (Suzume, voiced by Nanoka Hara), and a rather dizzyingly older male university student (Souta, voiced by Hokuto Matsumura) as they seek out mysterious doors opening up in abandoned places across Japan. Behind these doors lies an unimaginable terror, a big worm, that threatens to lay waste to populations with seismic troubles if the doors are not closed in time.

What ensues is a voyage of bonding, or at least that’s what the film hopes to convince you of, as the two reach new places and meet new people. These side characters would be interesting if fleshed out, but they aren’t. Just as soon as we meet them, it feels as though we’re being bundled off to the next group. As a result, there are no exciting subplots with characters you care for.

The barrage of empty characters means that there is not nearly enough one-on-one time with the two protagonists. There are a couple of high stakes scenes where emotions are flowing between the two main heroes, yet the strong bond they apparently have seems undeserved and forced.

One of the big driving forces behind this film is the obvious reference to Japan’s history of natural disasters, specifically the 2011 Tsunami, which Suzume’s mother died in. The genuinely moving parts of the film exist when the pair visit these derelict spaces. To shut the door, they must acknowledge the past memories that have now been erased, imagining the people who used to live there. They are touching and sensitive moments, but they are quickly moved on from, and so this mammoth subtextual meaning seems half inflated.

What made Makoto Shinkai’s past films, such as Your Name, so good, was cohesion and attention to detail. In Suzume there are so many strands of story that feel unfinished or neglected. For example, Souta comes from a family that is trained specially to keep the worm at bay, but we get no insight into any of their history. What it means is that the payoff just isn’t that satisfying – nothing really feels earned.

From a purely technical standpoint this film is brilliant. But in every other regard, this movie falls decisively behind the rest of Shinkai’s animations. A tall order to compete with, maybe, but even in isolation, I would argue the execution feels rushed.