Review: All You Need Is Kill

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

All You Need Is Kill is based on the same novel that inspired 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow (also marketed under the equally unimaginative—though admittedly accurate—title of Live Die Repeat), but apart from their shared premise—time loop, aliens, mechanized armor, the many brutal deaths of the protagonist—the two adaptations couldn’t possibly be more different. Whereas the earlier Tom Cruise vehicle is a fairly standard meat-and-potatoes sci-fi actioner (which is not a negative criticism, by the way—I quite enjoy meat and potatoes), this new animated interpretation of the material digs deeper into the underlying thematic subtext, utilizing the temporal anomaly around which the plot revolves as a metaphor for its central character’s unresolved trauma.

Rita is a young woman haunted by a troubled past. She’s associated with imagery of drowning (which we later learn is an echo of a near death experience in her childhood), frequently daydreaming about being submerged in an empty, expansive, abyssal void—adrift, suffocating, and utterly alone. In the waking world, she likewise exists in self-imposed isolation, cold and aloof. Life unfolds around her with monotonous predictability, and she remains inert within its flow, convinced that the rigid, inflexible routine proves that she is powerless to change her own circumstances. When she begins repeatedly experiencing the same morning ad infinitum—the very day, ironically, that an extraterrestrial invasion triggers a global apocalypse—she perceives it as a cosmic joke at her expense: even this catastrophic disruption offers no respite from her solitude. Her coworkers and acquaintances are, naturally, blissfully ignorant of their impending doom, and her apparent lack of agency in preventing their annihilation infuriates her to no end. Gradually, however, she breaks out of her fatalist funk: if she knows the future, then she can alter its course—nothing is inevitable. Thus, “moving forward to tomorrow” becomes the primary motivating force of the overarching conflict on a literal and symbolic level, encompassing both our heroine’s external struggle to save the planet and her internal confrontation with her personal demons.

Time travel stories of this particular variety inherently risk being… well, boring, due to the very nature of their circular, recursive narrative structures. Fortunately, All You Need Is Kill is crafted with a remarkable degree of efficiency and economy, getting straight to the point and maintaining a relentless pace, dispensing with unwieldy exposition and trusting that the audience is already familiar with the tropes that it’s exploring. I wouldn’t argue that it’s the best example of the extremely niche sub-genre to which it belongs (2023’s River covers similar ground with a greater sense of emotional honesty), but its bold stylistic presentation—surreal visuals, kinetic fight choreography, a vibrantly saturated color palette—and emphasis on characterization certainly help it to stand out amongst the (relatively small) crowd.