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With The Criterion Channel and HBO Max making the Shōwa era Godzilla films available for home streaming, and Adam Wingard producing a solid MonsterVerse film in Godzilla vs Kong, it’s easy to see how I’ve caught a bit of kaiju bug this year. When I’m spiritually exhausted and need something to watch, I tend to throw on a monster movie as a blank stare for relaxation. It’s like how a lot of pandemic-fatigued people have been looping The Office or Friends monotonously scrolling through old episodes. Most people would say that’s not a very healthy coping mechanism, but for some reason, it seems to work for me. But I will say I recently hit a new low in the indulgence when I watched Ape vs Monster. As a rushed and made-for-TV cash grab off the Godzilla vs Kong box office success, this movie has honestly zero redeeming qualities other than the magical novelty of two additional CGI creatures battling for my uninterested “amusement” I wish I could say I didn’t find some odd level of enjoyment in it.
Back to the Earth is a 2020 film centring on combat between a huge monster and a lady scientist, how unique. It portrays a hypothesized outcome of the Cold War and takes place in a futuristic dystopian world riddled with the remnants of a shattered civilization. An exploration of humanity’s deepest fears submerged under the terrifying shroud of the unknown.
Brought to you by fake-a-asylum productions, aka the fine producers of for so long and almost human. Eric Roberts’ dying career gets another blow because of his unassuming role in yet another low-end mockmentary. The poor acting alongside the ridiculous premise will surely leave you cracking a smile, so kudos for that mockmentary! I guess I can give this film some points for creativity, that is if your standards are set to the lowest. Applause, the lack of effort in CGI effects will astound anyone looking for a laugh.
The Gila Monster appears to be a video game prototype that took shape from American Godzilla’s 1998 film’s video game design. And the ape monster, well, he does not look like anything at all. Quite the opposite actually; the longer you observe its strangely pulled-together form, the more illogical its primate shape appears. Witnessing these two computer monstrosities attempting to make physical contact is akin to explaining a half-recollected dream nobody cares about, yet it manages to supersede one’s imagination.
I’ve come to notice that I don’t require a lot in a film to enjoy it as long as there’s a strange monster looking on the screen. That’s the only saving grace of Ape Vs Monster, which offers two delightfully comical monsters, and not much else. The film doesn’t shy away from pretending to have a romance between two lady scientists on the opposite end of a Cold War, but sadly, informs us right away that it has no intention of acting on that impulse. At first, I thought I was mistaking the Russian character’s sultry accent as queer tension, especially until one of the would-be couple’s military foes says, “Those two seem unusually chummy.” Either way, if the film had ever set out to stage a spectacle of two women kissing on camera, right at the feet of its disgraceful CG kaiju creatures, it would’ve had something special on its hands. As is, it’s profoundly unremarkable beyond the storyline slapstick humour which is left to be enjoyed by those easily amused.
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