‘Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle’ review: A stunning, sensorial fever dream in free fall

Anime movies spun out of long-running shounen series tend to trip over their own scale, with too much plot, too many characters, and far too little time. But the spectacular trappings of Demon Slayer’s much-awaited adaptation of its Infinity Castle Arc takes the opposite gamble, for time is what it has in abundance. At a whopping 155 minutes, the modern shounen phenom’s splashy new installment is the first slab in a trilogy meant to close the juggernaut franchise, and it feels designed to overwhelm. Demon Slayer has effectively announced that playtime is over.

Directed by Haruo Sotozaki and produced by Ufotable, the film plunges us straight into the final arc of Koyoharu Gotouge’s manga. The Demon Slayer Corps, fresh from a string of exhausting campaigns in the Hashira Training Arc, find themselves swallowed whole by franchise antagonist, Kibutsuji Muzan’s shifting fortress – the titular Infinity Castle that folds and unravels like origami under stress. 

Walls tilt, floors collapse, and doors lead sideways into voids. There’s no preamble to ease us in, not even a chance to breathe. The movie begins by abolishing all geography, casting our heroes headlong into an Escher-esque fever dream of suspended gravity. Muzan’s taunting lair, rendered in vertiginous sweeps of 2D and 3D, quickly asserts itself as an adversary in itself that’s almost impossible to map.

And then the fighting begins, which is, as ever, the franchise’s great seduction. Having always been more athletic than contemplative, the powerhouse of Ufotable takes the mandate very seriously. The duels unspool with the fluidity of ballet, but the velocity of a ballistic missile. Limbs shear away in clean strokes; sparks, flames and torrents of water collide in painterly bursts; and glowing nichirin blades trace calligraphic arcs across the frame with a flow that feels almost synesthetic. 

There is a Zenitsu sequence so exquisitely timed in which our erstwhile coward unveils a surprise seventh form of Thunder Breathing, that would justify the IMAX surcharge alone. Each crack of thunder lands half a beat after the strike, with the sound design dead set in rattling your teeth.

But the spectacle would be inert without the pathos. Gotouge’s enduring trick has been to lace every demon battle with memory and regret, and Infinity Castle leans into the tried-and-tested formula once more. Akaza, the tattooed brute who murdered fan-favorite Rengoku in Mugen Train, returns as Tanjiro’s adversary, and what could have been a rote rematch becomes the film’s tragic centrepiece. 

Mid-battle, his memories begin to peel back and his final act of a self-inflicted death, has ironically been the most affecting beat of the franchise since Rengoku’s own martyrdom. In true Demon Slayer fashion, the decapitation feels like liberation once more.Of course, to pause a fight for a requiem may be the most shounen impulse imaginable, but the series has refined that melodramatic detour into its signature gesture — an indulgence its peers, from My Hero Academia downward, have rarely managed with such conviction.

Not every subplot soars. Shinobu’s duel with Doma begins with promise but sputters into disappointment, robbing her of the decisive victory fans had been primed to expect (though manga readers would know that the Insect Hashira might just have one final trick up her sleeve). However, the imbalance does reflect the larger issue of the film juggling so many characters, that some inevitably fall by the wayside. Ensemble finales are prone to this triage.

When the movie yields to flashback, or indulges Muzan’s oily proclamations, its pacing wobbles without quite collapsing. The backstories themselves are hardly novel but they function like pressure valves, like moments of sanctioned release to unclench before the blades resume their dance. The cycle is familiar by now: encounter, memory, catharsis, renewed violence. But the filmmakers know precisely when to kick the pulse back up. 

What distinguishes Infinity Castle is its poise. Where Mugen Train offered a self-contained loop, this film sprawls outward, unabashedly unfinished yet cloaked in the flourishes of conclusion. Each confrontation carries the unmistakable premonition that not everyone will emerge intact. The series’ usual streak of comic relief is pared to the bone and replaced with an air of attrition. Even the music conspires in the effect, with Yuki Kajiura and Go Shiina’s swelling motifs heavy with portent and panic.

The movie is already rewriting records in Japan. Here in India, subtitled screenings at five in the morning are selling out, which is a small miracle for a country where anime movies were lucky to get special cult showings, five years ago. 

By design, this is only “Part One,” and it’s obvious that this is but a taste of the real fireworks that are being saved for later. That leaves the current film in a tricky position of simultaneously too much and not enough. Yet within those contradictions, Sotozaki and his team have crafted a magnificent blockbuster for the ages.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle hits theatres on September 12