MONSTER
Another direct to DVD flick by the film studio The Asylum, the company that has no shame in ripping other people off, in this case, Cloverfield. Now again there are no numbers, not even for simple DVD sales. Trust me, I've looked...
Before we get to the actual movie... Lets talk about the actual ripping off part, the Handycam. Giant Monster movies are not rip offs, they are in fact genres of course... A rather old genre though, that has lost a lot of steam in the past few years... I always thought the idea of the handycam would bring back some old classic genre flicks, like George Romero's upcoming Diary of the Dead. What a great way to reinvision the classic Zombie Movie...
But I'm getting away from my point. Giant Monster movies are a Genre, Handycams are a great way to put life back into dying genres... A Giant Monster Movie filmed in Handycam? Rip off.
On to the actual movie the plot is pretty simple. Two film makers, sisters, go to Japan to make a documentary about global warming. It is in the middle of an interview that the city is attacked by a strange monster, the girls spend the rest of the movie trying to escape while documenting every moment.
Let me start off by saying these two girls, established as filmmakers in the film, must have the worst camera ever made. Throughout the film you will be bombarded by static, warping and distorted tape, and a variety of other camera glitches that really should not occure every time the camera is moved slightly to the left.
Cloverfield got a lot of stick for it's camera work in regards to obscuring any full shot of the monster attacking with buildings or angle, but Monster takes it well beyond that as we never see anything more than a tentacle or two of the actual creature attacking the city. This truly takes away from the atmosphere of the film because, to me at least, it's hard to be afraid of something that has no apparent sensory... Tentacles can not see, hear, or smell and therefore simply flail around... Makes the monster more of a hazard than anything to be afraid of.
The atmosphere is further reduced as we see the girl's many a time on a pristine city street with nary a sign of debris at all, or a flourishing park, a roof top, a very nice looking store... The movie continues to give us the impression that Tokyo is being destroyed... But we never get that impression from the scenery at all until it's necessary for the plot to have a pile of rubble for them to walk on.
The acting though, from the two leading actresses at least, is pretty decent. Not award winning, but more than you'd expect from the material given. The girls do their best to make do with the material, and while there were scenes that grained down on me, I can only compliment the two for doing the best they can with what they were given.
Sadly it was not enough.
Another flop from The Asylum, another movie I wish I had never watched. The only saving point truly was going in expecting it to be as bad as AvH, going in with lowered standards is the only way to watch this movie... I suggest you just pass on by if you see it.
Before we get to the actual movie... Lets talk about the actual ripping off part, the Handycam. Giant Monster movies are not rip offs, they are in fact genres of course... A rather old genre though, that has lost a lot of steam in the past few years... I always thought the idea of the handycam would bring back some old classic genre flicks, like George Romero's upcoming Diary of the Dead. What a great way to reinvision the classic Zombie Movie...
But I'm getting away from my point. Giant Monster movies are a Genre, Handycams are a great way to put life back into dying genres... A Giant Monster Movie filmed in Handycam? Rip off.
On to the actual movie the plot is pretty simple. Two film makers, sisters, go to Japan to make a documentary about global warming. It is in the middle of an interview that the city is attacked by a strange monster, the girls spend the rest of the movie trying to escape while documenting every moment.
Let me start off by saying these two girls, established as filmmakers in the film, must have the worst camera ever made. Throughout the film you will be bombarded by static, warping and distorted tape, and a variety of other camera glitches that really should not occure every time the camera is moved slightly to the left.
Cloverfield got a lot of stick for it's camera work in regards to obscuring any full shot of the monster attacking with buildings or angle, but Monster takes it well beyond that as we never see anything more than a tentacle or two of the actual creature attacking the city. This truly takes away from the atmosphere of the film because, to me at least, it's hard to be afraid of something that has no apparent sensory... Tentacles can not see, hear, or smell and therefore simply flail around... Makes the monster more of a hazard than anything to be afraid of.
The atmosphere is further reduced as we see the girl's many a time on a pristine city street with nary a sign of debris at all, or a flourishing park, a roof top, a very nice looking store... The movie continues to give us the impression that Tokyo is being destroyed... But we never get that impression from the scenery at all until it's necessary for the plot to have a pile of rubble for them to walk on.
The acting though, from the two leading actresses at least, is pretty decent. Not award winning, but more than you'd expect from the material given. The girls do their best to make do with the material, and while there were scenes that grained down on me, I can only compliment the two for doing the best they can with what they were given.
Sadly it was not enough.
Another flop from The Asylum, another movie I wish I had never watched. The only saving point truly was going in expecting it to be as bad as AvH, going in with lowered standards is the only way to watch this movie... I suggest you just pass on by if you see it.
No comments:
Post a Comment