Ghost in the Shell (1995)

I'll be honest with you: I spent a good chunk of Ghost in the Shell genuinely confused, and I mean that as a compliment. This is a film that drops you into the deep end of questions about consciousness, identity and what it even means to be a person, and it has absolutely no interest in throwing you a life ring. You either swim or you sink, and even when you're sinking, it's beautiful down there.

Set in a future where the line between human and machine has blurred almost to nothing, the film follows Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg operative tracking a hacker known as the Puppet Master. That's the plot, but calling it a thriller feels like calling a cathedral a building. The story is really just the scaffolding for something far weightier: what does it mean to have a soul when your body is synthetic and your memories might have been written by someone else? Heavy questions. The kind that don't get answered so much as turned over, examined, and handed back to you still warm.

And the visuals make sure you feel every bit of that weight. The hand-painted cityscapes are extraordinary, all rain-soaked streets and neon reflections smearing across wet tarmac, mechanical bodies moving with an eerie, unsettling grace. There's a quiet sequence set on a boat, the city drifting past, that stops the film dead in its tracks in the best possible way. It's pure mood, no plot, just atmosphere and Kenji Kawai's score, which is one of the most distinctive pieces of music I've heard attached to any film. It hums and drones and chants like something ancient trying to make sense of something impossibly modern.

The gore, when it comes, is matter-of-fact and visceral without ever feeling gratuitous. Bodies are torn open, minds are hacked, identities are simply erased. It's treated with the same cool detachment as everything else, which is kind of the point. In this world, flesh is just hardware. The horror isn't the violence, it's the philosophical implications underneath it.

I was confused throughout, I'll say it again. The dialogue goes deep into existentialism and digital consciousness without stopping to explain its terms. But here's the thing: even when I couldn't follow every argument being made, I felt it. The mood carries you. The ambiguity isn't a failure of the storytelling, it's the whole game. You're not meant to solve this like a puzzle. You're meant to sit with it, feel slightly unsettled, and carry it home with you.

If you're drawn to anime that prioritises atmosphere and philosophical weight over conventional narrative, I'd point you towards Angel's Egg (1985), which takes a similar approach and pushes it even further into abstraction. And if you want to see how directly this film's ideas fed into mainstream cinema, well, I've already written about The Matrix, which owes an enormous debt to what Mamoru Oshii pulled off here.

Not always easy, never boring. The influence this film has had on science fiction is impossible to overstate, and watching it now, you can see exactly why. It arrived fully formed, utterly confident, and asking questions that still don't have clean answers. One of the greatest anime films ever made, and one that rewards patience, repeat viewing, and probably a bit of quiet reflection afterwards. Four stars.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 1995  | Watched: 2025-11-03

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Lionsgate+ Amazon Channel
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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Mamoru Oshii: Angel's Egg (1985)
More from Japan: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Blue (1993) · The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)
More animation: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025)