Before We Vanish (2017)

Before We Vanish is the kind of science-fiction thriller that sneaks up on you—starting with an eerie, unsettling mystery and gradually revealing a surprisingly tender heart. Instead of leaning on spectacle, it turns an alien-invasion premise into a thoughtful, character-driven meditation on love, identity, and what it means to truly know another person, all while keeping a steady undercurrent of dread. The tone is quietly hypnotic: intimate domestic drama on the surface, big ideas humming underneath, and a journalist’s investigation tightening the atmosphere like a slow-turning screw. If you want your sci-fi to be more poetic than punchy, this film’s sincere hopefulness and haunting mood can feel quietly exhilarating—though viewers craving nonstop action may find it more contemplative than combustible.

Before We Vanish is aiming for a thoughtful, melancholic sci-fi thriller that uses an eerie premise to poke at love, identity, and what makes us human. The problem is it often feels padded, with long stretches of quiet “dead air” that can read as atmospheric if you’re patient, or simply slow and bloated if you’re not. When the plot finally tightens, the payoff may not satisfy everyone, with an ending that can feel hokey and some rough edges in effects and character choices. If you like Kurosawa-style mood and slow-burn ambiguity, you’ll find moments of tenderness and unsettling intrigue; if you want a lean, propulsive thriller, this will likely test your patience.