Monster Mash: Anderson Embarks on Another Video Game Franchise Starter

Continuing with his signature interests, the adaptation of video games, director Paul W.S. Anderson arrives with his first offering since the end of the Resident Evil franchise with another similarly themed property, Monster Hunter, again with wife Milla Jovovich in tow.

As is usually the case with these kinds of ventures, logic and characterization are hardly attenuated in the wake of pure CGI spectacle. And like many of Anderson’s predecessors, rests upon the brand quality of its star, who is this time around even more diminished by various narrative language barriers and a sense of hopelessness in a never-ending onslaught against monolithic behemoths.

For those who enjoy watching video games without any kind of interactive component, the blaring cascade of repetitions this limited spectacle has to offer might be appealing, but for anyone desiring anything more from such elemental escapism, abandon hope all ye who enter here.

Whilst on a precarious U.N. Joint Security Operation in the desert, Lt. Artemis (Jovovich) and her elite soldiers encounter an electrical storm which transports them to a new world of dangerous monsters in a similar terrain. Separated from her crew, who are overwhelmed by these considerable beasts, she stumbles upon a man (Tony Jaa) who was stranded in this desert, also looking for a way to be reunited with his own band of warriors led by an Admiral (Ron Perlman) who is trying to conquer the most dangerous monster in this region. Together, Artemis and the unnamed hunter band together to get to the next portion of their journey, both desiring to return to their own kind.

If there was an arguable mythos which could have been transposed upon Jovovich’s long suffering Alice of the Resident Evil franchise, its difficult to find any similar approach towards understanding Artemis, the leader of a group of rangers who don’t seem well equipped for their profession (particularly Meagan Good in role so throwaway it’s borderline demeaning). After her crew is dispatched (ending with the demise of the equally miscast T.I. in a moment which almost seems to be aping a cut sequence concerning Captain Dallas in Ridley Scott’s Alien, 1979), Jovovich is locked into a terrible comedy of miscommunication routine with Tony Jaa (here in his most notable on-screen presence since the Ong Bak films). The famed Muay Thai fighter has little comedic or any other kind of chemistry with his co-star, bonding most significantly over a Hershey’s chocolate bar, which seems to be the key for how they learn to get along via rudimentary means.

With the New World sequences playing like Pirates of the Caribbean on a desert inhabited by the creatures from Tremors, Ron Perlman’s reintroduction in the last third of the film does little to enervate much of anything, instead allowing for more of the stupendously cringey dialogue doled out in the opening scenes.

For those banking on the spectacle of monster madness, Monster Hunter doesn’t actually offer many. Beyond some spider/scorpion creatures who seem modeled after those in Pitch Black (2000), there are only two, and they take an enormous amount of effort to bypass (not to mention, they look like any number of such approximations from contemporary Hollywood films, from Pacific Rim to Jurassic Park to the new Godzilla titles).

Decades from now, one wonders if all these titles will come to be viewed for the nostalgia with which Ray Harryhausen’s special effects were utilized, because Monster Hunter recalls the silly but likeable adventures of Mysterious Island (1961) or the original Clash of the Titans (1981). Or perhaps, like those films, they have to exist in our past to appreciate a certain magical appeal. One also yearns for Anderson to attempt something outside of this realm as in the earlier part of his directorial career (Shopping, 1994; Event Horizon, 1997). But for fans of his Resident Evil, Alien vs. Predator or Mortal Kombat, rejoice in Monster Hunter, which is definitely cut from the same cloth.

★/☆☆☆☆☆