Monster Hunter

UK Release Date. 18 June 2021
Certification. 12A
Running Time. 1 hour 43 mins
Director. Paul W.S. Anderson
Cast. Tony Jaa, Milla Jovovich, Ron Perlman.
Rating. 27%

Review.

Based on the long-runnning Capcom video-game series, Monster Hunter is heavily inspired by the media’s structure - hordes of enemies to annihilate, distinct environments which are abruptly, and impossibly, joined to make different levels and an anticlimactic final boss battle.

More than anything else, Monster Hunter suffers from a lack of imagination. Considering the film is based on a video game series filled with monsters of various shapes and sizes, to settle on giant spider-like invertebrates (King Kong), a creature which glides through the sand (Dune), and an archetypal dragon (Reign Of Fire) as your main mega-fauna is simply an uninspired approach. Indeed, the film rarely emerges from this unimaginative space, instead Monster Hunter is a largely visual piece whose aesthetic is bland, derivative and repetitive.

A outlandish plot - a portal transports Captain Natalie Artemis (Milla Jovovich) and her elite squad of rangers [read cannon-fodder] to a strange new world - is meagrely supported by Paul W.S. Anderson’s cursory storytelling. Nonetheless, the film remains somewhat grounded by the pairing of Milla Jovovich and Tony Java (The Hunter), as the director wisely focuses on their greatest strengths - their physicality. The chemistry succeeds because of the narrative restriction of a language barrier, leaving the two characters to mostly communicate through body language. Jovovich moves with action-hero grace, Java is extremely charming, even with minimal dialogue. However, during the action set pieces, Anderson’s camera is perpetually in motion, repeatedly cutting from one shot to the next resulting in a disorientating affair that undercuts Jovovich and Jaa’s action prowess.

The final act is rushed and muddled, and feels blatantly like a set up for a sequel no-one needs. Suddenly, more cannon-fodder is introduced to the audience, but creature features like Monster Hunter only work if the audience is invested in the characters - think of Alien, Aliens, Predator and Prey. These films excel because of character development.

Anderson, the director of Mortal Kombat and Event Horizon, has spent much of the 21st century involved in the Resident Evil franchise. He has directed four of the six Resident Evil films. Some may say he killed the franchise. The churlish may say he’s killed another, before it even got off the ground.