Monster Island

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.

Where the hell are the monsters??? Glimpses and pieces... nothing I'd watch ever again and I love these kinds of movies!

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.

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.