Hello everyone and welcome to a brand new movie review! For today, I’ll be covering a fairly recent video game movie that seems to have been forgotten despite only coming out just two years ago. That is of course Monster Hunter which is based off of the incredibly popular and successful action role playing series developed by Capcom that is still releasing titles to this day. What players do in the game is pretty self explanatory and while I personally have not played any of the games and always thought they looked pretty cool and the simple but fun premise of being able to hunt down monsters of all shapes and sizes can lend itself to a potentially exciting feature film. So when it was announced that it was getting the big screen treatment courtesy of Paul W.S. Anderson (who has had experience helming video game based features such as 1995’s Mortal Kombat and the Resident Evil series) I was curious in how it would turn out. It ended up being released at the tail end of 2020 and was essentially dumped in theaters and barely had any buzz aside from getting pulled from it’s Chinese release at the very last second due to the use of an offensive slang. Unfortunately I can see why this greeted the way as it didn’t quite reach the potential it had. Without further ado let’s take jump right into this world of monsters and see why it lacked any sort of bite.
The film kicks off with a prologue that throws us right into the New World, a place where both humans and monsters co exist, as we witness a mission gone wrong which leads to one of the Monster Hunters being stranded away from his team. We then cut back to Earth where we see a United Nations security team led by one Captain Natalie Artemis searching for a missing team of soldiers that was last seen in a desert. During this mission, a storm sucks them in and all of a sudden they get transported to the New World where they find out that this is last place they would want to end up. With the rest of the team getting picked off one by one, Artemis is the last one standing. She is not alone however as she runs into the aforementioned hunter and after some initial scuffles between the two, they end up having to team up to order to survive and hopefully find a way back home.
Now on paper the concept of Monster Hunter has potential to be a fun feature film and while this movie does involve out world in some capacity, the idea (which is not dissimilar to Stargate) concerning soldiers getting transported to this world of monsters can make for a neat action survival thriller. Unfortunately the execution ended up leaving a lot to be desired. While it starts off intriguingly enough as the movie wastes no time in transporting us to this world, I found myself un invested in most of these characters and once Artemis is the last one standing, the films mostly devolves into a series of scenes of her and the hunter trying to survive and head to a key location that could get her back to Earth. That in and of itself isn’t bad, the issue is that the film becomes very repetitive with little in the way of storytelling momentum or interesting interactions to keep it engaging. Instead we are mostly treated to everyone wandering around the area, reacting to monsters, fighting them, and then wandering around some more which doesn’t make for a very engrossing watch. There are some attempts at humor, largely coming from the interactions between the two leads, but most of it is pretty standard fish out of water stuff that at best mustered a chuckle or too. Likewise, there are hints of interesting world building with some mythology related to New World and the mysterious portal that can transport things from other dimensions to this one, but it’s all mostly surface level stuff that serves to move the plot forward. I guess I can see what Anderson was trying to accomplish here with the story and I do think it could have worked, but on the whole it left me mostly unengaged.
I think what really hurts this film for me though is the action, which is the last thing I’d imagine anyone involved in the production would want to mess up as there is a lot that can be done with this concept in regards to creative sequence. Unfortunately, I found many of the sequences to be nauseating to watch due to the constant use of rapid fire editing with the camera constantly cutting to different shots in the span of a couple of seconds and it is simply distracting. When that’s not the issue, the use of slow motion in certain sequences tries to make things look cool but that also ends up making things repetitive and slow instead of thrilling. Many of the sequences themselves also fail to stand out with the only memorable one for me being the climax when (spoilers) Rathalos gets transported to Earth and just absolutely demolishes a bunch of U.S. military units like nothing. It was a genuinely fun and visually inventive scene that delivered what one would want from a Monster Hunter movie and is actually coherent and easy to follow. If only the rest of the film had more like it. However, one thing I will give the movie credit on is that the monsters themselves look really cool. Again, I’m no expert on the games but based off of what I’ve seen, it seems like the CGI artists did a very solid job in translating them to the big screen and giving them a lot of detail. My personal favorite would be this cat/human hybrid chef named Palico who is sadly not in the movie as much as fans would hope. While there actually aren’t as many species as maybe some fans would have hoped, the ones that do appear are very cool to look at, even if the environment they inhabit is honestly not quite as imaginative as there’s really only a desert, some jungles, and the occasional mountain.
Like I mentioned before the characters are really nothing to write home about and hardly make for the most investing bunch to follow. Artemis makes for a dull lead with Milla Jovovich failing to give her much of a memorable personality beyond this battle hardened individual. Tony Jaa fares slightly better as he does well as the Hunter and is able bring some enthusiasm to the role, even if the editing prevents us in being able to see his martial arts skills in action (seriously what is it with Hollywood action films feeling the need to hide his skills). I will also admit that I actually like the idea of the two leads having to try and communicate through non verbal ways since they speak different languages. It’s a potentially interesting dynamic that could have added more to the film, but alas it’s mostly just surface level in execution. I can also appreciate the attempt in fleshing out the rest of Artemis’s unit to make their inevitable deaths a bit more tragic, but I still did not find myself feeling too much of an emotional attachment as most of them come off as one note personalities with only Tip “T.I.” Harris getting much of anything to do. It was also nice to see Ron Perlman pop up (sporting a costume that is best described as him auditioning for a live action Thundercats reboot) as The Admiral, even if he is just there to spout exposition.
As you can see, I was left largely unimpressed by Monster Hunter. While the potential was there and I like some of the ideas and visuals on display I found the film itself to be an unengaging slog with an un investing story, slow pacing, a bunch of exposition dumps, action that is hard to even make out or is dull, and characters that largely did nothing for me. It really is a shame as on paper this could have made for a fun monster mash, but instead ended up being yet another video game movie misfire. Maybe if your a fan of the franchise, you might be inclined out of curiosity to check this out, but I’m honestly not even sure how satisfied fans of the games will be. If your not a die hard fan though, I don’t think your likely to get much out of it as there are much more appealing options in both the realm of video game movies and giant monster films. Oh and this movie is also one of those would be franchise starters that ends off on an overt cliffhanger that teases more to come. Judging by how this film did and how it was received I think it is safe to say we won’t be seeing more monster hunting on the big screen anytime soon.
Rating: C-
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