A Japanese soldier and a British POW have to survive a stranding on a South Pacific island in 1942, one populated by a vicious monster in the sadly slight Monster Island, written and directed by Mike Wiluan, now streaming on Shudder.
Monster Island, originally titled Orang Ikan after the titular monster, is a frustratingly slight experience. It has a great premise, but an underwhelming, cheap-looking, and just lacking execution. Two soldiers, one from each side of the Pacific Theater in World War II, are chained together on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. The fight to survive long enough to find rescue is complicated by sharing the island with a very teethy, very angry creature. Unfortunately, that’s about it. While I don’t expect depth from a straightforward monster movie like Monster Island, but Mike Wiluan’s writing and direction do little to make it interesting enough to sustain the short 83-minute run time.
Bronson is a British POW. Japanese Saito is claimed to be a traitor. The pair on what’s known as a Hell Ship, a vessel transporting captured soldiers and sailors to Japan for slave labor. To add to the inhumane treatment, the pair is chained together and left to fight. Allied forces sink the ship, putting both – still chained – on the island. In a fun bit, they wake up and immediately start fighting again. But it’s not long before they make friends and work together when they realize this is bigger than them. The pair, played by Callum Woodhouse and Dean Fujioka, have solid chemistry, and the best aspects of the film are watching them try to figure out details despite knowing only a modicum of one another’s language.
Good they get along, because it’s soon them versus the Orang Ikan (a creature from Malaysian folklore), angry that they have crashed its island. As a creature, it mostly works. Inspired by the Creature from the Black Lagoon, this one is less about banging a mute lady and more about going Predator and stalking them and tearing out throats with its nasty teeth. (as a gillman, there are shades of Stan Winston’s nastier Monster Squad take). Monster Island provides some good gore with some monster fodder that have alit on the island.
The monster looks pretty good most of the time. It’s obviously a man in a suit. It’s fine fine-looking suit, but when it moves, you can see how it bends and turns in a suit, rather than skin, way; I had my eye out for the zipper. But Alan Maxson’s performance in the suit is never convincing. I put it on the suit, as Maxson has a long career of monster suit and motion capture work. In motion, it’s lacking. Maybe if it felt purposeful in the suit use, winky throwback. But Monster Island takes itself seriously with no self-awareness, so it comes off like “this is the best we can afford.” It doesn’t help that the film itself looks cheap, with notable limitations, such as the awkward opening or that there is just one monster – this setup is ripe to have a few more around to increase danger or have a good set piece (there is a perfectly normal crocodile at one point… so that’s something). It has the overlit, clean digital look; the type that never lets me become immersed.
We’re meant to have sympathy for the creature, indicating a loss of what passes for culture and family, like King Kong, with a baby on the way. But it’s an empty platitute. Despite the Predator note, the creature is purely instinctive. It’s less fun for the fight when there isn’t a build of the back and forth between the two sides. Bronson and Saito are similarly given little to hang on to their character, remaining cyphers for the length. These sorts of films usually incorporate elements from their lives to build their actions – an engineer, or a munitions expert, a lost child hanging on their soul, anything to bring character and action. But neither of these men is more than “POW on an island.”
It all finishes with an awkward, stretched-out coda that is meant to deepen the actions of the characters but drags on, ending the film with a limp annoyance. Fitting as the whole is stretched out, barely using its basic premise for good. I appreciate a Man in Suit, even if it didn’t look that good in motion. Monster Island is too slight to make an impression. Monster Island is currently streaming on Shudder.