Monster Island

I first came to know of The Asylum through their infamous Mega Shark series and other wacky monster films, which were fun trash to watch (key word being "fun"). So, when I heard they were doing their own version of the classic Monster Island (an idea first introduced in the Godzilla franchise), I was curious to see. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

So, the plot goes that a deep-sea prospecting expedition disturbs a kaiju, which threatens the world. While the military tries in vain to kill the creature, a team of scientists heads out to find an equally powerful beast to stop it. Sounds like a nice setup for all kinds of crazy carnage, right? Too bad, barely anything happens. The Asylum is known for making films featuring mass destruction and over-the-top action but this film surprisingly underplays it. Anything that is remotely exciting happens literally for a few seconds at a time with the rest just being the characters just observing and talking for long stretches of time. Monster Island itself isn't even the main focus, only appearing within the climax of the film and the actual "battles" between the monsters are uneventful and last as long as a blink of an eye.

I'll give the film credit that the graphics and animation have improved somewhat since the first Mega Shark, the creature designs are decent, most of the acting is adequately straightforward with a few silly performances, and the kaiju lore is okay if derivative. Sadly, this is all bogged down given how there's little payoff or excitement to be had here. All in all, "Monster Island" is a snooze and should simply be skipped.

Some very good actors dumped in a cast of lesser performers do their best to make this liw-budget monster film watchable. I had a few decent laughs!

Deep sea mining CEO battles kaiju in a tiny submarine. Yeah, it's that bad. The kaiju is half squid half starfish (sqarfish?) so it's officially the least interesting monster ever committed to celluloid. The acting is so wooden that it's a surprise the submersible can actually 'submerse'. The mining company's headquarters is a portakabin on the beach so that's clearly where most of the budget went. There's a lot of B movies where, with an open mind, you can enjoy them. This isn't one of them.

Why are these filmmakers still allowed behind a camera. Worse dreck in celluloid history. Looks like they walked up to some random guy on the street and said: Here's a thousand bucks to make a movie about kaigus, see what you can do. Apparently the guy pocketed 900 dollars and used the remaining 100 to hire some actors, director, sets and an etch a sketch for the effects. Of course I didn't watch this whole dreck; just FF to see how bad it could get. There should be a law.

Two employees of marine researcher Billy Ford (Adrian Bouchet) discover a giant starfish on the ocean floor which has lava for blood. Annoyed by the submarine, the starfish rises to the surface, slaps a couple of ships and then decides to head for the coast to lay eggs. Ugly little dragons are hatching from these eggs and start to puke lava at anyone they meet. Bad, bad babies! General Horne (Eric Roberts) summons the army in vain to solve the monster problem. Billy Ford, however, meanwhile simply attempts to find a bigger monster and arrange a battle of the two...

Another ludicrous 'Pacific Rim' rip-off from the Asylum factory line which was ok most of the running time (I voted 4 of 10). The actors were passable, some locations looked good, for example the Swiss cheese caves, the pacing was never lame, and the effects were what you expect from suffering similar experiences.