I suppose Toyoda Toshiaki thought he was being VERY clever and VERY artistic and VERY thoughtful when he made this. Why, gosh golly, this is an art film, didn't you know? Just look at how we shift from disparate scenes, none of them bearing any specific substance! First we softly fade in and out each time, wow, then we start cutting abruptly, double wow! Listen for how the song to greet us in the opening minutes - a slightly less obnoxious and more refined take on the nu-metal of 1999 - bears reflections on the nightmare of the modern world with lyrics that will in their own way be echoed with subsequent dialogue! Look at that one guy, oh my, he makes things happen by snapping his fingers and pointing! Jeez, Louise, the pointing! Wait to see how a monster in a mine is equated with a virulent disease that infects everyone, spreading madness; this was made in 2020, do you get it? Do you get it? Do you? Oh yes, Toyoda has things to say about the world and humanity in 2020, he sure does, and he's going to say them artistically! He'll even tell us something about ourselves, hoo boy!
We can say that there is a story here. We can say it, and it's almost true. No, maybe "concept" is a better word; this is an art film, remember, and art films have concepts, not stories. I applaud Toyoda for making a thing, and for writing words, and for thinking that he was doing anything important and substantive. For the record, by this I mean to extend the same praise to Toyoda that we give to kindergarten kids whose crayon picture of their cat kind of has eyes, ears, and a mouth, and we can maybe discern lines meant to be legs and a tail. Oh, and just wait until you see how Toyoda sort of but not really associates this with his prior short film 'Wolf's calling' by revisiting the key filming locations and select imagery. What an auteur!
All joshing aside, I like the score that was assembled for this tiny flick: one part haunting soundscapes, one part post-rock. Maki Kenji's cinematography is quite nice. And actor "MahiToThePeople" sure is committed, above all when he decides to scream and flail his body around. There, I said some nice things (three!) about 'The day of destruction.' Now I don't have to pretend to feel guilty about hating this self-indulgent bluster, I can just hate it openly and freely.
