Monster Hunter

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By John Gregory

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Giant monsters are cool. Don’t know why. Just a fact. Unless you’re Guillermo Del Toro and have the pull to get some chump change for Pacific Rim, however, most directors can’t get the scratch together to pull this stuff off. You know what’s also hard? Video game movies. What I’m trying to get at is today’s film had one heck of an uphill battle.

Monster Hunter follows a group of soldiers after they’re dragged into an alternate world full to the brim with horrifying monstrosities. Monsters roam free and our protagonists, a group of soldiers, must use every trick they have to survive. It doesn’t go well for all of them. Soon only one remains. But after she meets another human, a monster hunter, she finds there may be a chance for her to return home.

Instead of starting with the good, I want to delve into what doesn’t work here. This isn’t Paul W.S. Anderson’s first go at a video game movie. Resident Evil (which I like) and Mortal Kombat (which I haven’t seen though it has a noticeable following) are proof that he knows to give the audience a good time. Monster Hunter was a different story. The focus seemed to be on the struggle to survive in an unforgivable environment. Not that this isn’t an element to the games. But the tone isn't quite right. Rather than playing like a sci-fi Everest, this should have been closer to the light, yet sometimes dark, Jumanji movies. Bombastic and crazy rather than the more grounded approach here.

Now, again, I understand that there are realities to all filmmaking. You can’t do an exact replica to this game series because it is an absurd reality where regular people can knock out dragons with an axe made from monster hide. That said, MH’s other great problem was it had no mechanism to keep it moving. The Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat movies were inaccurate, sure. But they kept the momentum. The energy. You forget the why and then, when Monster Hunter almost gives answers, the movie ends. On a cliffhanger. That, in my mind, is this movie’s greatest fault.

Monster Hunter isn’t a capital “B” bad movie. I’m happy I saw it. There is plenty to like. The look of the movie, from the set design, costumes, and so on, is pitch perfect. And when the action is game accurate it is freaking insane. I also like the scene where the main soldier, Milla Jovovich, escapes a bug hive. Gets the pulse pumping. We even get some solid back and forth between her and the legendary Tony Jaa. I usually talk about how a great movie gets brought down due to many little things. Monster Hunter is the opposite. What could have been much worse gets saved due to many small solid decisions. If you love Monster Hunter or really, really want to watch this, wait until there’s a cheap rental available. Everyone else, play it by ear. No shame in not rushing into something to save some cash.