Monster Hunter
Might contain spoilers.
Two-thirds boring, gory body horror and one-third tolerable fun. What the cast are doing here cannot be called acting, save for Ron Perlman (his performance being the only indication that such a thing is even possible). I watched the movie over a number of sittings, hoping it would live up to its potential. Sadly, it never does.
The story is an incoherent afterthought, naturally. Why exactly do Milla Jovovich and Tony Jaa[1] start fighting after he’s saved her life several times over? Why does Ron Perlman knock Milla Jovovich out and imprison her? It seems like it’ll create a conflict between his team and her but no, she frees herself almost instantly and he’s suddenly convinced there’s no need to imprison her. Why are there so many people in Ron Perlman’s group who simply stand in the background with no purpose, including a black man who only appears in three shots of him being killed?
The two dragonlike monsters at the end are well designed and well executed. The same can’t be said about most of the others (for instance, the spiders). The oasis is garish in a very CGI fashion, particularly after the rather good-looking desert. The spiders’ nests, again, look terrible with their ever-changing colour and obviously artificial appearance. The storm portal reminds me of Shadow and Bone, which I watched around the same time.
- Character names seem superfluous.↩