Movie Review: The Troll Hunter

Did you know that transmission towers in Norway actually double as electrical fences to keep enormous mountain trolls confined to certain territories? Why do some trolls turn to stone when exposed to sunlight while others messily explode? What's the difference between a Raglefant and a Tusselad? Thankfully, The Troll Hunter film is here to answer all your questions concerning these previously assumed folklore creatures.

The latest entry in the “found footage” genre, the story finds a trio of Norwegian students on the trail of a suspicious individual, Hans, whom they suspect to be a bear poacher. They soon find out, however, that Hans is actually a government-appointed agent whose job is to covertly keep the indigenous troll population in check whenever they venture into human-populated areas. Realizing that they potentially have an historic expose on their hands, the students decide to follow and record Hans' daily routine, despite his concerns of a recent surge in troll activity.

Keeping in step with other films of its kind, the plot falls into the usual framework: a group of people (at least one of them armed with a camera that is almost NEVER put down) encounter something fantastic but threatening, try their best to survive the experience and ultimately have their story abruptly terminated at the film's end, leaving the audience to ponder the characters' fates. That being said, The Troll Hunter takes a slightly different approach to this formula and structures itself along the lines of a guerrilla-style documentary: think something along the old Crocodile Hunter television show but with humanoid beasts replacing the crocodiles and poisonous snakes.

It’s a direction not without consequence, however, as the three film students chronicling the events of the movie are reduced to mostly personality-free, interchangeable human props. Hans, the hunter himself, fares much better by comparison and the movie does a good job of portraying him as a savvy but weary individual whose job has (figuratively and literally) beaten him down to a husk. Honestly, though- if you’re watching a film called The Troll Hunter, chances are it’s not because you’re looking for an exercise in deep character development. Thankfully, despite the conservative budget, there is still a decent amount of monster-related content. This isn’t to say that the trolls are onscreen constantly- they're not- but things still remain interesting even when the protagonists aren’t being chased around. Just watching Hans in a diner explain the particulars of trolls and his profession ends up being an enjoyable watch in and of itself.

The computer animation effects are solid throughout and I liked how the trolls themselves look as if they’ve stepped right out of old Scandinavian fairy tale illustrations, complete with gangly proportions, thick brow ridges and large, bulbous noses. It really helps the “old school” feel that the filmmakers are trying to convey with regards to the monsters; slick, video game-esque designs would have been nowhere near as effective.

The Troll Hunter is a good example of how to pull off a “shakey-cam” monster movie without resorting to usual nonsense of shamelessly jerking around the audience. It’s hardly a groundbreaking endeavor, but still satisfying and entertaining- other films of this kind (*cough* Monsters *cough*) could certainly learn a thing or two from it. Four out of five.

Movie Review: Monsters

There’s a brief scene in Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, wherein a customer visits a grocery store shortly after Gamera has first appeared in Japan and complains about the inflated price of fish. The cashier explains that the added expense is simply the result of low supply, as the local fishermen are reluctant to go out on the ocean for fear of running into the creature that might still be lurking in the general vicinity. It’s one of those little mundane things that are often overlooked in movies of this kind but adds a welcome, if not subtle, bit of flavor to overall setting. When the rampages of gigantic beasts are a constant danger that looms over humanity, how would the everyday aspects of the world change in response?

In the setting of Monsters, the threat comes not from overgrown bugs or reawakened dinosaurs but a horde of enormous, extraterrestrial octopi which spawned from the micro organisms contained in a probe that crash lands in Mexico. Six years later, the U.S. has walled off its borders and routinely bombs the territory claimed by the aliens in an attempt to curb their numbers with little regard for the people that still live near the area. An American photographer, Andrew, is contacted in Mexico by his employer to escort his daughter back home by ferry before the aliens’ breeding season begins (which will leave them stuck where they are for months if they don't leave in time). As expected, their initial plans go awry and the pair find themselves with no choice but to cross through the “infected zone” in order to return to America.

Let’s just cut to the chase here; if you’re hoping for a cinematic monster mash, prepare to be disappointed. It’s not that Monsters is an entirely bad movie, but the squid thingys are basically peripheral decoration in a film that’s focused on something else entirely. This is really a road trip story about two somewhat selfish characters who come to understand each other in a parable concerning globalization and the strained relationship between Mexico and the United States.

So do the octopus creatures really need to be there? Not really. All things considered, with some slight tweaks, the movie could have just as easily taken place in some war-torn part of our normal world. The problem here is that the film is built around a high concept idea that it dangles in front of the audience like a carrot then turns around and mostly ignores. During the course of the story we get to see the aftermath of the aliens’ handiwork (the remains of boats that have been thrown up into hillsides, decimated urban patches) and while there are plenty of scenes where the characters tense up at offscreen noises, the trek across what we’ve been told is supposedly dangerous territory is otherwise relatively incident-free (as far as the monsters are concerned, anyway). Only at the very end of the film do two aliens finally appear for a brief sequence but it’s just not enough of a payoff to offset the previous near-hour and a half of waiting.

I do realize that some reviewers would argue that I’ve entirely missed the point about the monsters in Monsters and that their inclusion, however minimal, is merely meant to aid an allegory about a deeper issue- sort of like the way District 9 used aliens to punctuate a theme about social segregation. The difference here, however, is that District 9 was a movie about the nature of humanity by way of a story specifically about aliens. Monsters is a movie about two Americans experiencing the adversities of an impoverished Mexico... by way of a story specifically about two Americans experiencing the adversities of an impoverished Mexico with tentacled creatures lurking in the background.

It’s unfortunate that the film didn’t gel with me on a story level as I found it actually quite nice from a purely visual standpoint. There are some really nice shots throughout, especially for a guerilla-style, “hand cam” movie. The performances of the two leads are also solid, although the people they play are not so much endearing as they are self-centered twits. I suspect, however, that this may have been on purpose in order to play up the have/have-not dynamic between the American and Mexican characters.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, the scene in the grocery shop from Gamera: Guardian of the Universe is a neat little spin on an idea. In the case of Monsters, I imagine that budgetary limitations is what kept the movie confined to the store, so to speak. It’s not that the core concept was lacking by any means, but its execution is what made the finished film come across feeling like a missed opportunity. Two and a half out of five.

Movie Review: Mega Monster Battle- Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie

Allow me to start off this review with a quick question. Would you consider your knowledge of all things Ultraman to be:

A) Thorough

B) Casual

If you’re like me and fall into the “B” category, then Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie might be a bit of a mixed viewing experience. When it comes to the Ultraman movies, it’s been explained to me that the films (for the most part) are aimed strictly at young fans, so being only peripherally familiar with the franchise made Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie a tricky film to review.

The movie begins with the introduction of the Land of Light; home planet of the Ultramen. The inhabitants’ peaceful daily routine goes sour when Ultraman Belial, an incarcerated renegade who previously attempted to overrun the world with an army of monsters, escapes from his space prison. Belial heads straight for the Land of Light, knocks around the locals and successfully makes off with the “Plasma Spark”- the power source for the whole planet- leaving behind a frozen wasteland. Now the only hope in stopping Belial and returning things to normal lies with a powerful Ultra named Zero, who is away training in a remote galaxy.

While what I’ve explained up until this point, story-wise, seems straightforward enough, things get a little more convoluted once the cast of characters from the television series Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle appear and drop into the story with the assumption that the audience is completely up to speed with the show. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t watching a stand-alone, self-contained movie; this was a massive crossover exercise showcasing the entirety of the Ultraman franchise. To make use of a geeky analogy, imagine if Marvel Comics decided to make a film that featured Spider-Man, The X-Men AND The Incredible Hulk AND The Avengers AND Blade the Vampire Hunter as they team up against a selection of popular super villains. Would this make Marvel comic fans happy? Probably. Would there be time in the movie to explain all the details and nuances of said characters for the uninitiated viewers? Probably not.

While I couldn’t appreciate the movie on any sort of nostalgic level, Mega Monster Battle does move along at a decent pace with no shortage of rubber-suited, monster-brawling antics, so I was never bored. It is kind of weird, though, that all the various creatures from the Ultraman rogues gallery which make appearances are are mostly reduced to the level of cannon fodder; being easily knocked around with an ease that I can’t help suspect is probably contrary to the challenge that they presented in their original television appearances.

Admittedly, the film does reach a numbing point by the story’s climax, as you might expect from sitting through an hour and half of interchangeable silver and red characters punching stuff. As I had mentioned in my previous review of the original television series, Ultraman himself is a rather uninteresting individual- basically a deus ex machina plot device used to defeat the giant monster antagonist at the end of an episode. Teaming up a bunch of them together does little to solve this shortcoming but it’s not as if the movie was ever intended to be a deep character study.

Overall, Mega Monster Battle can be best summed up as a harmless “popcorn” film. You’ll probably get more out of it if you’re an Ultraman fan, but even as an outsider looking in (like myself), there’s still enough entertainment value to make for an amusing watch. Three out of five.

Movie Review: How To Train Your Dragon

When I went to see How To Train Your Dragon, I’ll admit that wasn’t really expecting much; in the realm of computer-animated movies, my tastes sit firmly on the Pixar side of the fence than Dreamworks’ end. Even last year’s Monsters vs Aliens- a film that was practically channelling my geeky love of 50’s monster movies- did little to sway that bias, as I felt that the final product didn’t quite measure up to the sum of its core ideas. As it turned out, however, my initial assumptions were quite wrong- not only is How To Train Your Dragon a great movie, it’s arguably the strongest thing that Dreamworks studios has put out to date.

Despite being the son of a viking chieftain, teenaged Hiccup is rather lacking as a battle-hardened warrior. This shortcoming poses a bit of problem, given that his tribe has been locked in a generations-long war with fire-breathing dragons that regularly plunder the local livestock. Eager to prove his worth, Hiccup ventures out one evening during an assault on his village and manages to shoot down a fast-flying dragon with a home-made bolas cannon; unfortunately, without a body for proof, nobody believes his story. The following day, he tracks the incapacitated dragon- now unable to fly thanks to a damaged tail fin- to where it had crash landed in a nearby forest and identifies it as a member of a rare and deadly breed called a “Night Fury”. Despite what he’s been raised to believe about their dangerous nature, Hiccup takes pity on the creature and attempts to befriend it.

Slowly, a trust builds between the two and as Hiccup learns more about the dragon, he begins to realize that everything that he’s been taught about them has been filtered through fear and misunderstanding. Hiccup nicknames the Night Fury “Toothless” (because of its retractable teeth) and gives it back its means to fly by way of a prosthetic tail fin, as well as outfitting it with a saddle so as to accompany the dragon during its airborne excursions. Unfortunately, their friendship presents a new dilemma: as a dragon sympathizer in a village of people who would rather annihilate the species entirely, Hiccup is faced with the possibility that any attempt to share what he’s learned with fellow vikings would be grounds for banishment or worse.

I really enjoyed How To Train Your Dragon- while it’s not perfect by any stretch and perhaps a little formulaic, its overall charm easily paves over the shortcomings. Of particular note is that the movie actually feels like an evolutionary step for Dreamworks; it’s refreshingly free of pop-culture reference gags, blatant anachronisms or hit songs used as musical decoration, instead relying solely on straightforward storytelling for narrative and character moments for humor. The film also resists the lure of some of the more annoying oft-used animation tropes, like making the non-human characters a little too anthropomorphic. The dragons, while intelligent, are ultimately still animals and act as such: there were no smarmy cocked eyebrows or slack-jawed reactions to be seen and I was all the happier for it.

The overall aesthetic of How To Train Your Dragon is quite appealing with great designs for both the human and, particularly, the dragon characters. The movie actually throws a bit of a tease at the audience when Hiccup thumbs through an encyclopedia of dragon species, showcasing a bunch of what were possibly conceptual ideas that never made it into the finished film. Perhaps they’ll appear in a sequel, something which I definitely look forward to. Four and a half out of five.

DVD Review: Ultraman (The Complete Series)

Hey there, Ultraman... sometimes I feel as if I owe you an apology. Despite my fixation with the giant monster genre, I never really embraced your franchise in any sort of significant capacity. While I do have a working knowledge of your various television incarnations and rogues gallery of enemy monsters, I’ve never actually sat down and watched any of your series from beginning to end. I don’t even have a decent reason for this, either. Perhaps it’s simply because you were never ingrained into my psyche back when I was a wee, impressionable lad- the original 60’s program actually aired in North America back in the seventies, but not on any of the channels where I lived.

As it turns out, one of my Christmas gifts this past year was a DVD set of the very first Ultraman series, thus ridding me of an excuse to not finally get acquainted with the show. All the same, this was a somewhat tricky review to write because, well- it’s a children’s show from the '60s. The episodes are pretty formulaic and the special effects are exactly what you’d expect from a television-budgeted production from that era. That being said, I did find it entertaining all the same.

The story for the uninitiated: in the distant, futuristic world of the (ahem) 1990s, marauding giant monsters and invading aliens are commonplace enough to warrant the creation of the Science Patrol- an international defense organization whose members are outfitted with all manner of high-tech gadgetry and vehicles. Shin Hayata, a Japanese Patrol agent, is out investigating the appearance of flying spheres of energy when one crashes into his ship, completely destroying it. The end.

Well, not quite. The UFO is actually a method of transport for a gigantic being from space named “Ultraman”. To atone for the accident, the alien merges his life essence with Hayata’s, reviving him from the brink of death and leaves him with handheld cylindrical device called the Beta-Capsule. By pushing a button on the top of said mechanism, Hayata can transform into Ultraman whenever the need arises (although the change seems to be more akin to the two switching places). However, because the Earth’s atmosphere is not terribly compatible with Ultraman’s extraterrestrial physiology, he can only do his thing for a few minutes before his energy levels extinguish.

Most episodes tend to follow a strict formula of the Science Patrol coming across an alien or monster and failing to deal with the problem until Hayata finally becomes Ultraman and disposes of the threat. This repetition is to be expected of a kid’s program, but at the very least the series had the common sense to mix around the motivations of the various creatures for variety instead of a slew of enemies that were evil just for the sake of it. In fact, to be brutally honest, the monsters are real stars of the show. Ultraman himself? There’s really not much to him. He’s sort of like Superman; so all-powerful that he ends up being rather uninteresting. In the few instances where the monster of the week didn’t go down like a sack of potatoes during the climactic fight, I was actually thankful for the break in convention.

While the effects work is pretty representative of low-budget, rubber suit techniques, the show does deserve props in terms of raw ambition; the sheer amount of costume and miniature work (even with the obvious production shortcuts) was something that most American sci-fi shows being made around the same time weren’t even remotely attempting.

Overall, the DVD picture quality was passable at best (noticeable video resolution “lines” appear whenever stuff starts moving around quickly), but the English version audio track was downright awful in terms of audio quality. Perhaps a decent quality version was unavailable but after a few episodes, I switched over to the Japanese track and watched the rest of the set with subtitles.

So now that I’ve had a taste for the show, will I be seeking out more? Hard to say. Although I found all the various daikaiju and fighting to be fun romp, it didn’t take long for the repetitiveness of the stories to start wearing thin on me, so I don’t think that sitting through any of the sequels at this point in time would further endure me to the series as a whole. I suspect that my enjoyment of the character may simply remain along the lines of conceptual appreciation more than anything else, but that opinion may very well change with time. My brain is funny like that.

Three and a half out of five.

Movie Review: Chaw

To be perfectly blunt: The Host, this ain’t. When I first heard about the Korean giant killer boar movie Chaw, I had hopes that it would follow more closely in the cinematic footsteps of the aforementioned film than, say, the unsatisfying D-War: Dragon Wars. While it might be unfair to compare the two, it’s kind of perplexing how a movie like Chaw can be made after something genuinely decent like The Host and yet, seemingly learned nothing from it.

Police officer Kim Kang Su is hoping for a change of pace from his stressful existence in Seoul when he is transfered to a quiet, forest village but arrives just in time to be assigned to a case involving the discovery of the dismembered remains of a young girl. The girl’s grandfather, an retired hunter, is convinced that the perpetrator is actually a wild boar with a taste for people. Before long, the entire community becomes focused on finding the creature, unaware that it’s an even greater problem than they initially suspected.

Before I go any further with this review, I should mention that the DVD copy I watched was a Chinese version with spotty english subtitles, so a lot of the plot details ended up lost in a sea of lousy translation. Unfortunately, this also proved to be particularly problematic with regards to the humor in the film, as Chaw is meant to be an intentional horror/comedy outing. I can’t help but wonder if my final opinion is somewhat tainted by the fact that I missed out on a lot of the jokes- well, the dialogue-based ones, anyway. Nonetheless, it was pretty obvious where the film would dip into lighter moments and, to be truthful, I simply found it more forced rather than funny whenever it did.

And therein lies my key problem with Chaw: it’s as if the filmmakers seemingly couldn’t decide on what to do with regards to both tone and content. The story alone felt like it could have used some trimming in terms of the number of characters and weird little subplots that just end up going nowhere. All the extra fat in the script might also explain why the killer boar itself is barely in the movie for the first hour; when it finally does show up, it’s only for a brief sequence before disappearing again for another twenty minutes until the movie’s climax. Be it for reasons of room or budget, the creature’s absence probably wouldn’t have bothered me as much if its threat was a little more omnipresent. Even as the various characters wander around in the woods (particularly during that first hour), it never really feels as if the boar could come barreling out of the shadows at any given moment.

On the special effects end of the spectrum, the CGI (and occasionally animatronic) work used to portray the boar is decent for the most part, especially considering that the film had nowhere near the budget of a Hollywood blockbuster. Granted, computer-generated fur still has a little ways to go in terms of being 100% convincing (unless you’re able to throw tens of millions of dollars at it), but at the least the movie had the sense to keep most of the boar sequences in low light to help hide the shortcomings.

To sum things up, if you’re looking for a monster romp, you might want to look elsewhere. The imbalance of humor and horror in Chaw didn’t quite gel with me, even though I firmly believe that the two genres can be successfully merged together (as in the case of Tremors, for example). I think the biggest problem was that I went into the movie expecting a main course of monster pig but instead got servings of lame duck humor- that’s not a decent meal in my book, unfortunately. Two and a half out of five.

Movie Review: Wyvern

Being a citizen of the Great White North and only a basic cable television subscriber to boot, I have no access to the American Sci Fi (Sorry- SyFy) Channel or its home-brewed films aside from reading online reviews or what occasionally makes its way into the video rental shelves up here. However, while I am aware that there have been a couple of forays into giant monster territory, my urgency in seeking out these movies has always been dulled by the fact that they’re somewhat notorious for being... well, bad. Still, being a fan of this genre nowadays often means that you simply take what you get whenever new films occasionally appear and as I sat down to watch Wyvern, I fully expected a repeat experience of Dinocroc: a lackluster movie that features an otherwise a neat-looking monster on its DVD cover.

Surprisingly, I was wrong in my assumption; all things considered, Wyvern is actually an okay giant monster film.

Keep in mind that I used the word “okay” and not “great”. If anything, the movie’s weakest point is that it’s yet another entry in the horror-comes-to-a-small-town formula that has been recycled endlessly since Jaws and firmly subscribes to all of its cliches. Central protagonist is a charismatic outsider? Check. Initial monster attack casualty dismissed as something pedestrian? Check. Planned town social event goes ahead despite warnings that doing so will put everyone participating in danger? Characters learn that if the monster isn’t stopped, the scope of its threat will become even more disastrous? Check. In an earlier version of this review, I had planned to include a plot synopsis but to be honest, it really isn’t necessary. If you’ve seen Jaws, Tremors, Bats, Arachnophobia, Piranha or any of a number of similar movies, this thing basically goes through all the same motions only with sightly different characters.

So what did I enjoy about the film, exactly? For one, unlike most straight-to-DVD release of this kind, the headlining creature of the film- the entire point of why I’m watching the movie in the first place- spends a surprisingly decent amount of time on-screen. No skulking in the shadows or only showing up in full view during the final minutes of the film- the wyvern is in plain sight throughout. Furthermore, the computer animation is actually pretty good as the monster moves around with a nice sense of weight, even when airborne. Refreshingly, the story also opts to give the wyvern a mythological slant to its origin; although the concept doesn’t really go anywhere aside from being used as a fanciful theory for the monster’s existence, it is a nice change from the overused “escaped, bio-genetic military experiment” explanation that currently seems to be in vogue with films of this kind.

Overall, Wyvern can be best described as “competent”; in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a particularly significant entry in the genre but in terms of what it sets out to do, it does adequately. All things considered, that’s more than what could be said of many of the straight-to-DVD giant monster movies nowadays. Three out of five.

Movie Review: Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus

If there’s a lesson to be learned from Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus, it’s that expectation is the bugbear of common sense. It’s not as if Asylum, the company responsible for the film, has any sort of reputation beyond rushing low budget, straight-to-DVD Hollywood knockoffs to video store shelves (Transmorphers, anyone?), so there was already a heathy amount of skepticism present when the film was first announced. Yet, all it took was a trailer with one fleeting shot of a gigantic shark jumping out of the water at an airliner (as seen from the a P.O.V. of a passenger from inside the plane) to replace my doubt with cautious optimism that the movie might, at the very least, be a fun romp with lots of over-the-top giant monster goodness.

Whoops.

Here’s the thing: if you’ve watched the trailer (look it up on YouTube- it’s been posted a few times by different people), you’ve pretty much most of the good bits from Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus in their respective entireties. I can’t help but suspect that the film’s undoubtedly low budget probably had a lot to do with why the starring monsters are barely in the movie, but it’s still vexing to sit through scene after scene of uninteresting human characters talking about said giant shark and octopus instead of actually seeing them.

The plot is pretty straightforward stuff: a military operation involving a sonar transmitter near Alaska causes the destruction of a glacier which frees a prehistoric shark and octopus that had been trapped inside it. The two beasts swim away and immediately get busy wreaking havoc; the octopus demolishes an oil drilling platform off the coast of Japan, while the shark goes on an eating spree. Concerned oceanographer Emma MacNeil suspects that something is amiss when the mangled corpse of a whale washes up on a California beach, despite her superior’s assumption that the wounds are merely the result of a boat propeller. Emma revisits the site later that evening and discovers the fragment of a gigantic shark tooth embedded in the carcass. She secretly smuggles the item back home and consults with her old mentor, Lamar Sanders. The two mix colorful chemicals and run a computer scan on the tooth to learn that... it is indeed a tooth. They are soon contacted by a Japanese scientist, Dr. Seji Shimada; along with some video footage taken of the glacier when it shattered, the trio come to the realization that two enormous prehistoric sea monsters have been let loose into the oceans.

In the meantime, the mega shark decides to catch up to the octopus in terms of human body count and takes out a commercial airliner and U.S. naval destroyer. Having run out of ideas, the military forcibly enlists the aid of Emma, Lamar and Seji to come up with a way to stop the creatures. The scientists comply, but only under the terms that the creatures are subdued without being killed so as to preserve them for study. The three get to work mixing chemicals, but can’t seem to come up with any decent ideas. A sexual rendezvous in a janitor’s closet between Emma and Seji inspires the two with a plan to use chemical pheromones in order to attract the creatures to specific locations in order to contain them. More chemicals are mixed together. Unfortunately, things do not work out quite as intended; the shark eludes an attack from a battleship then takes a bite out of the Golden Gate Bridge while the octopus destroys Tokyo bay (well, we’re told the latter, anyway- the audience never actually gets to see anything). Since doing things the humane way just isn’t cutting it, the characters decide that the best thing to do would be to attract the two monsters to a mutual location so that they can finish up their battle from a few million years earlier.

As to whether you’ll enjoy Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus or not is really going to come down to a mixture of your mood, expectation and level of inebriation. In my particular case, I was a little bored, hopeful that the craziness seen in the trailer was reflective of the actual film and stone-cold sober. It probably explains why I didn’t care much for it. A big problem here is that the film is- to put it bluntly- dull. At times, I almost felt like I wasn’t watching a giant monster movie so much as seeing an exercise in padding. Notice during the plot synopsis that I kept mentioning how the characters continuously indulge in bouts of mixing chemicals? Those sequences go on just long enough to make you wonder if the filmmakers were desperate to meet the movie’s running time and used every cheap trick they could to accomplish it. In two separate sequences, a naval vessel attempts an attack on the mega shark which, in turn, destroys the ship: both bits are practically identical to each other, as if someone had literally photocopied the earlier portion of script, changed the words “destroyer” to “battleship” and switched in new characters.

Acting-wise, Debbie (sorry- “Deborah”) Gibson is one of the better players in the cast, which really isn’t saying much. The actor playing her mentor tries his best at a Scottish (?) accent that is so inconsistent and distracting, it’s kind of a wonder why he even attempted to begin with. Former daytime soap star Lorenzo Lamas, who plays the obnoxious government official Allan Baxter, is just downright painful to watch; even for someone who is hamming up his performance. At least, I’m assuming that he was purposely acting over-the-top. It would be frightening to consider the possibility of what’s seen in the finished film is a legitimate effort on Lamas’ part.

Special effects-wise, the CGI runs a gambit between competent and lackluster. The animators seemed to have trouble wrapping their heads around the concept that if something is supposed to be immense, it doesn’t zip around as if weightless. In many of the shots which involved the mega shark swimming along, the creature is swishing its tail back and forth like a guppy, completely undermining any sense of scale. Odder still, this same problem extended to the non-monster stuff, such as the military submarines, which also exhibited unbefitting amounts of speed and agility. And one little note to the film’s director- while blatantly recycling shots of the two monsters during their climactic fight may be easier on the film’s budget, it’s practically the filmic equivalent of flipping the bird to the audience.

As I said earlier, perhaps one has to be in the proper frame of mind to enjoy Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus but if you’re really in the mood for a giant monster skirmish, there are better films out there to satisfy that craving. 1 out of 5.

Book Review: Shambling Towards Hiroshima

I recently took a job that requires a short commute to and from work and while partaking in public transit is certainly nothing to get excited about, I do relish the opportunity it has given me to catch up on my backlog of reading. The first book I sunk my literary teeth into was the short novel Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow. The plot is both unique and amusing; during the summer of 1945, representatives from the U.S. Navy approach Syms Thorley, a successful B-movie actor, with an unusual proposition. They want Syms to star (by way of donning a rubber suit) in a special film and stage production wherein Japan (by way of a miniature set) is destroyed by the fire-breathing monster, Gorgantis. As it turns out, the American military has actually created giant, mutant lizards and are poised to unleash them onto the unsuspecting Japanese populace: the movie’s true function is to act as a “what if” scenario in order to intimidate the Japan into peacefully surrendering. If Syms’ performance is anything less than convincing, countless innocent civilians will be destroyed in the destructive wake of rampaging, monstrous iguanas. 

One point that should be addressed right off the bat about Shambing Towards Hiroshima is that this novel is not about giant monsters per se, but rather, giant monster MOVIES. It's easy to make that assumption, especially given how the synopsis comes across. Yes, there are enormous, dinosaurian lizard creatures in the story, but they’re merely plot devices. The real focus of the novel is the world of sci-fi/horror films; the people that create them, act in them, the fans, the politics and the egos. Morrow is certainly familiar with this particular corner of Hollywood, as references are scattered throughout the story- even some real world filmmakers like Willis O’Brien and Sam Katzman show up in supporting roles. 

Shambling moves along at a decent pace and the lead character is a very well-rounded and amusing narrator (the book that we’re reading is basically Syms Thorley’s memoirs). Morrow frequently plays around with the theme of juxtaposing the fantastic against the pedestrian, which really helps to ground and humanize the story; in an amusing reversal, the mundane dilemmas and obstacles surrounding the portrayal of the “fake” monster Gorgantis end up being a more dire threat than the “real” monsters that are ready to destroy Japan.

I suppose that the novel’s biggest problem would be that casual readers not as well-versed in the whole sci-fi/horror film genre probably won’t get as much out the story as those who are up to speed on the jokes and references. It’s also a very short book, although I personally never consider that to be a shortcoming by any stretch (in fact, it helps to ensure that I actually finish reading it to completion before my lousy attention span fixates on something else). That being said, these are minor criticisms at best and in no way undermine an otherwise enjoyable read. 

A solid 4 and a half out of 5.