Shinkaijû Reigô

No, not PS2, PSOne special effects! The actors are playing it serious, so doesn't seem they were trying to go "The Asylum" route , but why oh why didn't they go with suitmation/model ships? As is, there's no way to take this movie seriously.

Shinkaijû Reigô, also known as Reigo, the Deep-Sea Monster vs. The Battleship Yamato or Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters to cash in on the recent success of Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a cheap below average monster film from Japan that is only interesting for the most adamant genre fans and faithful collectors. This is the kind of movie you can watch once you have watched all the films involving Gamera, Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and Varan and are still craving for more. This means that you have roughly a hundred films to watch before this one should even interest you remotely.

The plot is extremely thin. The movie takes place during the Second World War on Japanese battleship Yamato, the most impressive of its kind. Instead of battling against American ships in the Pacific, the fleet gets attacked by unusually big fish. The crew defends itself, killing the offspring of a sea dragon in the process. The gigantic mother creature is triggered by those events and destroys all ships of the fleet while the final battle occurs between the desperate crew of the Yamato and the legendary monster.

There aren't too many positive elements to mention, so let's start on a generous note. The film has decent pace and mostly entertains in its eighty miunutes, especially in its swift second half. Most scenes of the film take place on the battleship at night or in small rooms of the crew which give the film a gloomy claustrophobic atmosphere. The few landscape shots serve as a welcome contrast, especially the scenes at the beginning of the film that provide some background information on some of its characters. The soundtrack is serviceable as it blends in very well with the sinister atmosphere of this movie.

Everything else is however a complete the disaster. The most serious offenders are the horrible special effects that look artificial, blurry, cheap, dark and grainy. Their quality reminds me of video games from the mid-nineties at best. Up next, the misplaced, shaky and unfocused camera work doesn't help improving things. The sound effects are repetitive, simplistic and unimaginative as viewers can hear roughly two different monstrous screams on endless repetition. The acting performances are also dreadful as almost all male characters are overacting since the actors seem to confound loud screams with authentic emotions. Only the side story involving a young soldier and his childish childhood friend and potential love interest is remotely interesting. A special shoutout goes to the terrible Japanese actor who is supposed to play a stranded American soldier who doesn't look like an American, can barely speak two sentences of English, communicates in fluent Japanese and oddly becomes the saviour on battleship Yamato when shooting the sea dragon.

At the end of the day, Reigo, the Deep-Sea Monster is only interesting for adamant kaiju fans who might watch this below-average production once with their friends and a few beers to approach this flick from a humoristic perspective.

It's hard to hate this movie, yet it's difficult to sit through it. This might have worked as a super campy low budget Godzilla rip-off, but the movie plays it completely straight and tries to be a dramatic war movie. It can't keep up with this pretense with it's ultra-cheap sets and abysmal CGI effects. The plot is actually not bad, neither is the pacing and the performances, but it feels like an amateur movie pretending to be a blockbuster. This works great for the Asylum Mockbusters, but these have one vital ingredient, they are self-aware. Can't really recommend this to anyone.

While the special effects are not ILM quality, they are better than in many similar indie films. It is not, however, the special effects that drive the film, but the characters. Stylistically, most of the film is straightforward in its presentation, but the the film rides above a standard kaiju effort when it draws upon the conventions of kabuki theater.

First off this film has a lot of heart and you could tell they tried as best as they could with what little they were offered on this budget. I think the best part of the film is the script. The design of Reigo is awesome. The CGI is definitely my least favorite part though. Overall I didn't think this movie was bad but it's not going to be the talk of the town. I decided not to take points away for the CGI because I feel like this film did the best they could with what little money they had for the CGI. The other things about this film exceeded my expectations. If you're a dedicated Kaiju fan then check this film out but if you're just a casual fan this might not be the film for you. Overall I enjoyed my time watching this movie.