In 1995, Paul W.S. Anderson released his first major commercial film, an adaptation of the popular fighting game franchise Mortal Kombat. While reviews for the movie were decidedly mixed, Mortal Kombat held the title of best-reviewed video game film adaptation for over two decades. Several years later, Anderson helmed a series of films based on Capcom's Resident Evil series, cementing himself as one of the biggest names in video game adaptations. With the Resident Evil franchise now getting rebooted, Anderson has turned his attention to Capcom's Monster Hunter series, and the results are exactly what one might expect: An entertaining bad movie.
At the start of Monster Hunter, a squad of US Army Rangers led by Captain Artemis (Milla Jovovich) investigate the disappearance of Bravo Squad following a storm. After some pun-filled banter, the group are swept up in the same storm as Bravo Squad and transported away to "New World," which is the monster-filled universe of the titular game. What follows is a fast-paced action-horror movie in which Artemis and her fellow Army Rangers fight for survival against a number of different Monster Hunter creatures, including Diablos.
Approximately a third of the way through the film, though, Monster Hunter abandons any horror element entirely and turns into the sort of action movie theatergoers have come to expect of Anderson. From there, Monster Hunter moves rotely between cinematic battles filled with super-heroic feats, with bits of exposition sprinkled in between battles. The only real variation becomes just who is in which battle, as the cast expands and contracts over the course of Monster Hunter, though Artemis and The Hunter (Tony Jaa) generally remain the movie's main characters.
Although they at times feel like they're pulled straight out of a movie from the early 2000s both in their cinematography and pacing, Monster Hunter's battles are entertaining and fun. However, aside from the weapons and the creatures, there's little about the battles in Monster Hunter that resembles the games' methodical hunts. While there are nods to the games and their style, most of the battles in the movie devolve into generic action film fare, which is a huge missed opportunity. Still, Anderson's action sequences have always been at the very least entertaining, and the ones in Monster Hunter are, despite being basic, a lot of fun.
While the action is entertaining, though not particularly special, Monster Hunter's visual effects really do capture the spirit of the games. For the film, Anderson re-teamed with Dennis Berardi, who was the visual effects supervisor on Resident Evil. Berardi's company, Mr. X, handled the visual effects for Monster Hunter -- and they're absolutely fantastic. The monsters in the film feel like true live-action versions of those in the game series and really help to make the fights entertaining. Combined with a ton of stunning real-world filming locations, Monster Hunter's visuals really help with immersion and transporting viewers to New World.
However, despite those positives, the parts between Monster Hunter's many epic battles aren't good and actively hurt the movie. The dialogue is hammy, exposition-filled and just absolutely terrible on pretty much every conceivable level. Characters are so poorly developed that they have to find obvious ways to indicate they didn't just pop into existence at the start of the film and that they actually have some semblance of a personality. This makes it hard to get really invested in any character or even identify anything resembling an interesting arc, idea or theme. Monster Hunter is pretty much entirely surface level, and it's genuinely disappointing the aforementioned visual effects and action scenes aren't in a movie with anything interesting to say.
As a result of the film's structure, Jovovich's Artemis and Jaa's Hunter end up being Monster Hunter's primary focus, and they do about as well as can be expected with the script. Jovovich, who has starred in many of Anderson's films, delivers Monster Hunter's awful dialogue with a straight face and has the charisma required to make the movie watchable. Jaa, for his part, doesn't really have that many lines, but he's a capable lead and does a good job of expressing himself non-verbally. Additionally, despite his relative lack of screentime, Ron Perlman does well as the rough and gruff Admiral, though that's to be expected of the veteran actor at this point. Still, the material Monster Hunter's capable actors are working with is so bad they're really only able to just barely get it past the point of groan-inducing awfulness.
Monster Hunter isn't a good movie. The movie's characters are flat, while its the exposition is clunky and any internal logic falls away the moment one stops to think about pretty much anything that happens. Monster Hunter is, thus, like pretty much every video game adaptation Anderson has done in the last decade, meaning it holds absolutely no surprises for any of his devotees. However, just because Monster Hunter isn't a good movie doesn't mean it's not entertaining while it lasts.
Written, directed and produced by Paul W.S. Anderson, Monster Hunter stars Milla Jovovich, Ron Perlman, TI, Tony Jaa, Meagan Good and Diego Boneta. The film arrives in theaters on Dec. 18 in the United States.