When you get that first uncomfortable feeling that you’ll soon need full access to the bathroom. Remember the lawyer dude in Jurassic Park?
Monster Island (2019) may not have had any real discernible theme, certainly no stars, and not even Godzilla, and yet this story of what a hard driving marine mining entrepreneur discovers on the floor of the ocean, amidst the manganese nodules he seeks, is unexpectedly charming.
And what does he find? A kaiju, a monstrously huge, tentacled, fiery creature that traps the mining CEO and the crew of their submersible craft when they investigate the sudden disappearance of their remotely controlled probe. As they ride out their situation, the Australian Coast Guard intervenes via ship and submarine, much to the woe of the Coast Guard, the kaiju – and its young.
But the miners are not without craft, seeking to find ways to destroy their foe. But when an attempt goes awry in unforeseen ways, a government inspector, along for the ride, who happens to be a geomythologist – a rather neat portmanteau – suggests bringing in an expert on kaiju myths, who directs them to Monster Island.
Because that’s where the kaiju killer … exists.
It all sounds silly, and some of it is. For quite a while, nary an Australian accent is to be heard. The physics and the biology beg for hoots of laughter. The reclusive expert on myths is given some bad dialogue. And, yet, it’s an earnest, almost charming, movie. Given a set of ridiculous assumptions about kaiju in the world, it quite calmly follows the logic, both physical and emotional, to its end point. It doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice a character to emphasize the serious situation in which they find themselves. The characters change in believable ways, and, even more importantly, they’re not cardboard cutouts. My personal favorite is the grizzled French captain of the rental boat used by the miners for transporting their, for he has a fine gift of subtle sarcasm.
The story comes to an abrupt end, in fact such an abrupt end that I wonder if they ran over-budget and had to prematurely terminate what could have been a truly messy kaiju fight. But if you’re in the mood for some big monsters trodding the boards, as it were, you may enjoy this uneven effort.
I know I’d watch a sequel.
