All You Need Is Kill Review

All You Need Is Kill will open in theaters at a date TBD. This review is based on a screening at the 2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

Hiroshi Sakurazaka and Yoshioshi Abe's light novel All You Need Is Kill has previously provided the basis for a manga and the Tom Cruise-Emily Blunt movie Edge of Tomorrow. Now Ken’ichirô Akimoto makes his feature directorial debut with a new version that gives the “live, die, repeat” story the visual splendor only animation can provide. It also gives its main character an emotional arc unlike that of any other previous take on the story.

From the get-go, this All You Need Is Kill presents itself as a very different adaptation. There is no world on fire, no squadron of elite soldiers fighting alien creatures. Rather, it's a movie made for the post-COVID world, where the arrival of a massive alien plant, thereafter known as Darol, causes havoc when it spreads its roots across Earth, emitting electromagnetic surges that plunge the world into chaos. One year later, on the anniversary of this historic event, most of humanity has simply learned to ignore the giant alien flower and go about their day as usual.

Except, on this day, things are different. We follow Rita (a different take on the character played by Emily Blunt in Edge of Tomorrow), a young, ordinary woman working in a huge complex designed to study Darol. When thousands of creatures suddenly sprout from the plant’s giant stalk, Rita is killed instantly – only to wake up and relive the events of the anniversary day. Then she’s killed again, and the same thing happens. And so on, and so on.

This change ups the stakes of All You Need Is Kill. Rita desperately tries to warn her co-workers of their impending doom, but nobody listens because nothing bad has happened during the year they’ve lived with Darol. The editing, which contrasts Rita's constant deaths with the screams of nearby scientists and the eventual quiet of the cafeteria where Rita always wakes up, is striking.

Despite this being his first time directing a feature, Akimoto commands the screen, leading the team at Studio 4°C through a stunning, cell-shaded movie full of vibrant colors and dazzling POV shots. Even though the story is quite small-scale and intimate – since we’re only viewing it through Rita’s attempts to stop her time loop – the animation gives All You Needs Is Kill a sense of scope. Even when she meets a fellow time-looper, Kenji, the action remains focused on the two of them rather than whole armies battling it out. Adding to the unique look are the mechanical suits the characters wear, with elongated limbs that give them a Digimon-like appearance.

But Rita's story is the heart of this adaptation. She’s our eyes into the alien attack, and it ends rather quickly. As she learns to improve her fighting skills, the focus is entirely on her experience and how her loneliness in the time loop reflects what she'd been feeling for years before Darol landed on Earth. This is the first time any version of All You Need Is Kill has focused on Rita's perspective, and as it dives into her existential isolation, it finds a rather moving tale about seeking meaning in chaos and trying to move forward from tragedy.

Not that there isn't action: Akimoto and team double down on the video game vibes of the source material. Indeed, it feels like a big, cinematic roguelike in which Rita both trains to be better at using certain weapons and has to memorize every movement of her enemy, each new loop bringing her an inch closer to her objective. The fighting itself is dynamic, the movements fluid.

And yet, All You Need Is Kill stumbles hard in the third act, to the point where the whole movie is nearly derailed. The story leaps forward too far and too hard, and in the blink of an eye delivers its climax minus much build up and plus some odd, unexpected plot twists. Worse yet, its attempts to veer off from any previous ending of All You Need Is Kill renders Rita – who’s been our entrypoint into this saga all the way up to now – a passive observer. Thankfully, there's still plenty to enjoy and marvel at before that ending. Maybe it’s just best to declare game over once you make it to the final boss fight.