Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution is going to be a strange film to talk about, and not just because I went into reviewing it with next to no prior knowledge about the manga and television series that it’s based on. Yes, I will admit to being lost for a lot of the film’s lightning paced ninety-five minute running time, but I can’t say that I was ever bored or uninterested. That alone would make me want to recommend it, but I fall slightly on the negative side of things because it’s not even technically a movie, but rather a hybrid clip show/season premiere masquerading as a theatrical release, which makes the whole thing feel a bit dubious. There’s a lot to like about Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution, but it’s essentially a feature length commercial catered towards die hard fans who want to see these characters on the big screen and/or they can’t wait for the new series to drop early next month.
I’m not going to get into the minutiae of Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution and its lore because I would simply butcher it. Like the smash hit Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle from earlier this year, Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution isn’t the kind of movie one can jump into with both feet and expect to be able to effortlessly swim. The gist of the plot here revolves around the never-ending battle between good and evil. There are good, highly skilled jujutsu sorcerers trying to protect the world from a variety of “curses,” evil entities that possess powerful energies and abilities. The series has many characters, but the primary focus here is placed upon Yuta Itadori, a young man who wants to do good, but is plagued by guilt over his role in a devastating massacre that left many dead and implicated him in various crimes. A high level sorcerer who shares the same mentor, Yuji Okkotsu, is ordered to go out and execute Itadori for said crimes.
Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution really is a film of two halves, or more appropriately, of two seasons of television. The first half is a blisteringly paced speed run through the events that transpired at the end of the show’s second season, best known as the Shibuya incident, a large scale, bloody, and chaotic sorcerer showdown set on Halloween of 2018. This section of the film is all killer and no filler, with blood gushing, limbs flying, and more quick edits than a Michael Bay movie. It’s all bombast with only the most fleeting bits of context to be found.
This proves to be a problematic choice for director (or more appropriately, assembler) Shouta Goshozono. It’s effective enough to give the uninitiated just a taste of what the series is capable of in terms of spectacle and action, and what makes it to the screen is gripping, visually dazzling stuff. But if you don’t know anything about the show, most of this won’t make sense because the context and character depth is missing. People show up, you maybe learn one fact about them if you’re lucky, and then it’s on to the next epic battle. It made me want to learn more and dig deeper into the Jujutsu Kaisen universe, so it’s effective in that sense, but not in time for me to speak more intelligently about it here. For fans, this opening salvo feels like a disservice on multiple levels. It edits down an entire half season of a beloved series into 45 minutes and forces fans to essentially pay twice for something they’ve already seen.
The second half of Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution is comprised of the first two episodes of season three, The Culling Game – Part 1, and has a vastly different pacing and tone. There’s still action, but a fuller narrative and moments where it becomes clear to the unfamiliar that this is a much deeper show than the film’s first half would suggest. Similarly, this is unquestionably what fans of the show want to see on the big screen rather than a supercut of the previous season’s bloodiest high spots. (It doesn’t help that Goshozono doesn’t try to hide the film’s roots as a series here, leaving spots for ad breaks in instead of editing things more fluidly.) This all begs the question: why not just release a few episodes of the new season as a movie and make it a true big screen event instead of putting the clip show in at all? I assure you as someone new to this series, the narrative would’ve made just as much sense. It wouldn’t make much sense since I’m far behind, but at least I would’ve been treated to something a lot more thoughtful and well designed.
I can’t tell you the significance of “convergence,” “blood manipulation,” or any number of the specialty attacks used by the characters in Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution. It’s all kind of gibberish to me at this point, but I wouldn’t mind learning more from my local library (or North American streaming partner Crunchyroll, which premieres the new season on January 8). There’s enough in this volume to entice new viewers into playing catch up, which makes it an effective enough commercial, but not a successful movie. And fans might be better off just rewatching the previous seasons at their leisure before the new instalments than going out to see this.
Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, December 5, 2025.
