Monster Island (2019)

Monster Island (2019) - The Asylum

Back in the day my friends, before I hung 'em up, this is what I lived for.  Watching and talking about movies made by The Asylum or the Sci-Fi Channel originals.  There's pages on the old site dedicated to the films of the Sci-Fi Channel and the Asylum, and we loved them so much... or some facsimile of something resembling love.  Now many movies have come and gone since the last time I reviewed one, but I could not sit idly by and let this one slip through.  Another classic combo of the Sci-Fi original and The Asylum, timed to mockbuster on some Godzilla: King of the Monsters, we bring you Monster Island.  Is this movie still as terrible as the ones we remember from back in the day?  Yes it is my friends, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Billionaire industrialist Adrian Ford is doing some deep sea something or another involving something.  I don't really know what.  What I do know is that it looks like this Billionaire has a total of two people who work for him, and that the actor playing this Billionaire, Adrian Bouchet, was struggling mighty with his American accent, to the point I couldn't even pinpoint what his actual god-given accent was supposed to be.  Australian maybe?  British... South African... who knows.  Why they just didn't let this man speak in his native foreign-like version of English is beyond me.  Anyway, these two people that work for him are Deep Sea RC operators Cherise (Donna Cormack) and the glorious Riley (Chris Fisher).  What makes Riley so awesome is that he spent this entire movie in pretty much a complete state of terror, even when nothing terrifying was really happening, and all by himself, he and his facial expressions was the straw that stirred this movies drink.

I think the picture above is from somebody asking Riley what time it is.  Unbeknownst to our crew, a monster has wrecked their little remote control vessel, so they need to get into an actual vessel to check out the situation.  Also along for this ride is government under sea mining regulator Sarah (Natalie Robbie), who informs us that she has her degree in Geomythology, or the study of stuff caused by monsters that don't exist.  This is a thing.  You can actually major in this.  I kid you not.

Down into the sea our heroes go until they have the misfortune of landing on a giant six-legged starfish thing with diamond skin and volcanic magma for blood.  The Kaiju are real!  Adrian wastes no time in telling the authorities about this shocking find, as this monster is making it's way to land to wreck stuff, which introduces us to General Horne, as played by the Legendary and terribly prolific Eric Roberts in one of the three or so scenes he will have in this movie.  Also above the title in this movie actor Toshi Toda, who I guess gives this monster movie it's Asian cred, even though he's in this movie just a little bit more than me and you are in this movie. 

So we gotta stop this thing!  General Horne is military thus he wants to bomb it.  Adrian and his two employees want to science it to death but Sarah and her GeoMythology degree needs to talk to her estranged mentor, Dr. Hangaroa (Margot Wood), to get some critical Kaiju knowledge.  You see, Sarah discredited her former mentor and her stupid monster class feeling it was waste of her tuition, thus driving her former teacher into exile.  A few things about this... First, Sarah, you wasted your tuition when you chose to major in GeoMythology.  Secondly, I would take a class on monsters in a heartbeat, and unlike my other college classes I would've actually paid attention, so you're dumb Sarah.  Thirdly, you have to be a weak ass college professor if an undergrad term paper manages to discredit your entire field study.  For shame Dr. Hangaroa. 

Dr. Hangora, now overjoyed that monsters are real and she's no longer a crackpot, knows how to really stop this thing, and that's awakening the Living Mountain.  This can only be done by dropping the blood of the beast into its eye or something.  Plus she's named the six legged giant starfish, though I can't remember what she called it, and it's laying eggs.  We need to drop blood in the eye of the cave like yesterday or we're toast.  And Riley is dead, thus I've lost all interest in this movie.  That's a spoiler.  I'm sorry but I'm upset about this.

Though I've been away for a while, not much has changed in Asylum-world.  Mark Atkins is still directing a lot of these movies though I thought he'd have moved on to bigger and better things by now and I'm sure he probably thought the same.  Lots of words are spoken by many characters of varying degrees of acting ability, because words are cheap and monster battles are pricey, and I hope you enjoy watching people in closed, tight spaces for long periods of time because that's were the bulk of this movie takes place.  I thought they would NEVER get out of that beached mini-sub.  Only Riley's increasing anxiety was making it tolerable for me.  I also hope you like really tight close ups on people's faces, which I assume hides the spartan sets that surround our actors.  Good thing they all had nice skin leading me to believe that Oil of Olay was the biggest budget buster of this production.  However, though they were far and few between, the monsters looked pretty good, the editing was hectic and simulated action pretty good, once they got out of that damn sub, though I must say the final battle between the starfish and the Living Mountain was a tiny bit anticlimactic. 

Eric Roberts and his freewheeling recital of whatever lines they gave him was, to no ones surprise, awesome.  I'm sure they gave him a script but when you're making five movies a day, one really doesn't have the time to remember all those lines.  Seriously, it's only halfway through 2019 and Mr. Roberts is listed in various stages of production of 54 movies and TV shows for this year alone, where his slacker baby sister has probably made about half that many movies in her entire career.  All hail E-Rob!

Do you like battle destroyers getting split in half by a giant tentacle (a la Megashark vs. Giant Octopus)?  Or nuclear subs getting split in half by a giant tentacle (Bermuda Tentacles)?  Or CGI Helicopters being knocked out of the sky (every Asylum movie ever)?  Or a place called Monster Island that has a surprising lack of monsters?  Then I got the perfect movie for a lazy Saturday for you my friend.  Damn I missed you guys.