The Lake

No pun intended - obviously I am making a joke here. Also no chicken (was hurt) either - but you knew about that. If you are into creature features, you will have quite the swell time. Really well done - the (special) effects we see here. I imagine this didn't have the biggest budget, yet it really delivers on that front (and back - another pun?).

One thing is for sure, you should never take away something that does not belong to you - I think that is a lesson everyone can learn from this movie. Suspend your disbelief and experience this with the characters - and a monster you may be able to sympathize with ... until it gets you between his teeth ... only slightly kidding with this ...

I was pretty hyped up for the film after I saw the trailer, unfortunately there wasn't a whole lot to back up my optimism. A lot of the dialogue is clunky and doesn't make sense, and it's pretty obvious whoever translated this put it through a machine without paying attention to the results. Some of the name changes were also very questionable like giving the characters American sounding names which honestly took me out of it. The plot is rushed but the movie itself is filled with plenty of filler scenes where the monster is just standing there. To its credit, that monster looks awesome and were well above many low-budget American monster movies so well done in that regard. Other than that, there's nothing to really keep holding your interest.

Fortunately, I was able to watch this with original Thai Language (it defaulted to English dub on Prime Video and 30 seconds of THAT and I knew I HAD to switch). Sure, the story is pretty generic, with small slices of Jurassic Park (1993), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and The Host (2006) and the character development is almost non-existent. But the monster has a cool design and the CGI and practical fx are pretty impressive for what, I'm assuming, is a smaller budgeted giant monster film. The acting is above average and the film is well-photographed, save for some quick cuts in the shrubs early in the movie. Overall, its not as bad as most "The Asylum" creature features you'll catch on SyFy & nowhere near as bad as its current IMDB rating makes it out to be. I enjoyed it, but urge folks to seek out the film in original Thai language, as I imagine the crappy English dub gives it an unintended "campy" tone.

With a humongous and deliciously gooey-looking monster on a film poster, you can seduce pretty much every fan of old-fashioned horror! Purely based on the poster image, I fell for "The Lake" like President Clinton would fall for a plump intern secretary, and I did whatever it took to be present at the Belgian Festival premiere, even though I had just injured my leg. Isn't that dedication?

Of course, being a horror fanatic since several decades already, I'm also very much aware that posters can be very misleading, and that even the most promising looking monster-movies can turn out to become massive disappointments. "The Lake" certainly isn't a massive disappoint, but I can relate to where the negative and harsh reviews thus far are coming from.

Let's start with the good! The monster(s) look awesome! They can be best described as crossbreeds between Godzilla, the T-Rex from the original "Jurassic Park", the man-thing from "Creature from Black Lagoon" and the ugly beast from the low-budget flick "Zaat" (which probably nobody else has seen). And the monsters receive plenty of screentime, so you can admire them in all their glorious cheesiness! That's another big advantage of "The Lake", by the way, nobody in their right state of mind can claim this film is boring. The monster-action kickstarts right at the beginning and remains at a high and fast-paced level throughout the film. Purely speaking in terms of B-movie entertainment, "The Lake" undeniably delivers.

Unfortunately, there's always a negative flipside as well, and the biggest deficiencies of "The Lake" are to be found in the scenario department as well as in the lack of experience/overview of the young & over-excited director Lee Thonkham. A creature-feature like this doesn't really require an in-depth or intelligent screenplay, but Thonkham nevertheless manages to ruin the basic standards. For some reason, he adds a sort of spiritual connection between the monsters and two of the lead characters, which doesn't bring any value whatsoever. Important characters keep disappearing and re-appearing, and the last 15-20 minutes of the film are a complete mess, and this easily could have been avoided. Secondly, and I blame Thonkham's young age and lack of experience for this, the editing is incredibly hectic and incoherent. At some points, "The Lake" is a non-stop spitfire of short shots (approximately 30 sec), clumsy handheld-camera footage, and completely unnatural camera angles. Perhaps a slightly too ambitious project for a beginning director, but I definitely want to see how he evolves.

PS: two things I learned about Thailand by watching this movie: there is a lot of seriously heavy rainfall, and everybody drives a pick-up truck. Insightful!

I recently watched the Thai film 🇹🇭 The Lake (2022) on Prime. The storyline follows a small lakeside town terrorized by a monstrous creature after its eggs are disturbed. As the creature goes on a killing spree, the government quarantines the area, leaving the locals as the only ones who can stop it.

Directed by Lee Thongkham (Kitty the Killer), the film stars Chartchai Ketnust (The Mother), Sushar Manaying (The Couple), and Vithaya Pansringarm (Only God Forgives).

From start to finish, this is one of those films where you constantly find yourself rolling your eyes at the characters' decisions. Despite a family subplot, there's little reason to care about what happens to anyone. The CGI is decent, the monster design is cool, and the film has a strong Gamera-like vibe, for better or worse. The horror elements are entirely CGI-driven, and while the premise is straightforward, the execution lacks depth. This is really only enjoyable for diehard monster movie fans looking for something new.

In conclusion, The Lake has some fun monster moments but lacks the storytelling to make it a genuinely good film. I'd rate it a 4/10 and only recommend it with the appropriate expectations.