Monster Island

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!

Eric Roberts. WHY hire him? WHY WHY? He wasn't wearing the correct uniform and needed a haircut BADLY for being in the "navy".

The submarine existed of about $100 worth of materials. It looked like those zero turn mower handles were on it. The hatch was thinner than an aluminum garbage can lid. They did put 4 over size pressure gauges in the sub to make it look technical haha. This movie is NOT to be taken seriously. When the sub comes out of the ocean you can see another object underneath it lifting it up above water. There were no "monsters" in this movie at all. Just very poor cgi 3 second glimpes of a limb or something.

I've seen better High School movie productions from up and coming film makers. Yes, is is that bad. Only watch if you want to shake your head from side to side at the utter amazement that someone even financed this movie.

If I was in it, I would not put this on my resume. I'd swear I must have had someone look like me and steal my name. Yes, once a gain. It is that bad.

Evidently, so far the ratings of 1 seem to actually be telling the truth. One very positive reviewer must be one of the stars relatives.

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.

I was looking forward to the low-budget mirth promised by this low-cost affair that promised to be a cheap-and-cheerful Godzilla/Pacific Rim romp, but it is really, really, really bad. The monster action is pretty limited and a giant lava-filled starfish is not really my idea of a menacing giant terror, I must say. This might be mitigated with a likeable and engaging cast of human characters, but alas...Sometimes Asylum films deliver the so-bad-it-is-great goods to at least entertain in a perverse way, but this effort is just dispiriting and beyond dull - which is a crime for a mammoth-beast-on-the-rampage flick. In terms of the nominal star, I thought that The Cloth must surely be the nadir of Eric Roberts' career, but apparently not. Hopefully The Killers will soon come a-calling for him to appear in another one of their videos so that he can say no to the next Asylum call.

So, my advice regarding this film is this: don't weigh anchor at this island, just sail on to a better movie.

I am about as anti-Asylum as they come. I have never seen an Asylum film that was worth the first 5 minutes of watching. For some reason this one brought me to break my "No Asylum movies" rule. Maybe I was bored, tired, whatever. Watched it.

Surprisingly, it wasn't terrible. It's a little slow in places, but the story is interesting enough. The ending was ludicrous, as is typical of Asylum films, but it wasn't completely lame. The actors for once were reasonably decent. The directing wasn't half bad. The monster was a bit of fun.

So I'm giving it a 5-star "mediocre" rating. Almost gave it a 6 just because Asylum managed to finally produce a film that wasn't a complete loser. This had plot, story, directing, acting, goofy-but-not-stupid ending. Why, for Asylum this is almost prime roast... if one doesn't mind the flies swarming around. Besides, it's a Kaiju (giant monster) film. What are people expecting, brilliant conversation? Asylum. Kaiju. Face it... it could have been much worse. As in "Atlantic Rim" worse. Now that was a loser.