Director – Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil)
Starring – Milla Jovovich (The Fifth Element, Dazed and Confused), Tony Jaa (Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, Jiu Jitsu), and Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Pacific Rim)
Release Date – 2020
Rating – 3/5
I consider myself a gamer but I’m not one into all games. Right now my obsession is Ark: Survival Evolved but I’m always playing the newest Call of Duty along with Scum, Snowrunner, and a few others. I’m not familiar with the Monster Hunter game series so I wasn’t really interested in the movie when it was announced.
However, I recently watched the Resident Evil films and decided to look a little further into it. The trailer looked pretty fun so I decided to wait until the film hit store shelves to snag a copy. Last week I snagged the 4K release and was finally able to spin it.
**Spoiler Alert** The film follows a group of U.S. Army soldiers who find themselves in a freak electrical storm in the desert. They find themselves transported to another world where monsters wreak havoc. With her squad now dead, Artemis (Jovovich) is forced to fight for her life against the onslaught of creatures until she befriends a warriror (Jaa) who helps her. After arming her with some weapons the two make their way to the electrical storm so she can get back home. **Spoiler Alert**
I went into this one expecting a fun popcorn flick that was similar to Resident Evil. It was a fun fantasy action flick but it could have been so much more than what it was. I liked it but I don’t see myself spinning it again any time soon.
The acting in this one is pretty cheesy but not bad. The characters are not that likable and you find yourself looking for them them to die…but they don’t. Jovovich delivers another rendition of Alice from RE with an underwhelming performance while Jaa is extremely under-utilized. We also get a pretty fun character in Ron Perlman but he is barely in the film. The one character that you really enjoy and like is in the movie maybe 20 minutes.
The story for this one is pretty fun but nothing movie fans have never seen before especially if you compare it to children’s movies from the mid-90s. What we get is a group of people whisked away to another land which is similar to films like Warriors of Virture, Adventures in Dinosaur City, and a slew of others. Not the most original set up but it serves it’s purpose. It works for that aspect but we then get into the fantasy aspect of the film which is not explored like it should have been. The film is mostly grounded and action oriented until the last 30 or 40 minutes before the real fun fantasy elements are brought in. Maybe that’s because they planned on a sequel pre-covid but I was hoping for a lot more.
Finally, this one has a lot of visual effects and some great looking creatures but if you are looking for blood and gore you will be disappointed. The creatures are fun and the visual effects really look great especially in 4K. Overall, Monster Hunter is a fun big budget release that anyone can enjoy. I can’t vouch for how close to the game series it is but as a popcorn flick it’s pretty fucking fun. Check it out.
