The Lake

They have a very interesting monster. The smaller one was probably a man in a rubber suit, but the larger one was CGI (or camera tricks) but done well. It was quick, agile and menacing. The movie is dubbed, and that is done badly. The movie would have been better served keeping the native language and using subtitles. The voices didn't seem to fit the actors, and the level was as if a teenager was talking. The moral is don't take the egg. The movie seemed very unpolished and amateurish. Crowd scenes didn't seem to be done very well, and the initial chase through the brush was very chaotic. There had to be some talent behind getting the movie done, but it didn't come across. I wanted to like the movie, having seen a sneak preview that got my interest but the movie didn't live up to the teaser trailer.

Fortunately, I was able to watch this with original Thai Language (it defaulted to English dub on Prime Video and 30 seconds of THAT and I knew I HAD to switch). Sure, the story is pretty generic, with small slices of Jurassic Park (1993), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and The Host (2006) and the character development is almost non-existent. But the monster has a cool design and the CGI and practical fx are pretty impressive for what, I'm assuming, is a smaller budgeted giant monster film. The acting is above average and the film is well-photographed, save for some quick cuts in the shrubs early in the movie. Overall, its not as bad as most "The Asylum" creature features you'll catch on SyFy & nowhere near as bad as its current IMDB rating makes it out to be. I enjoyed it, but urge folks to seek out the film in original Thai language, as I imagine the crappy English dub gives it an unintended "campy" tone.

A movie about a Godzilla-style monster in Thailand seemed like something for me. It turns out that a lot goes wrong in this movie. Let's go first to what goes well. The monster design. Good design and is very convincing in slower-moving scenes. The little girl's performance, the best of the cast, the least forced. The soundtrack is nothing out of this world, but it fits perfectly into the film's most tense scenes. Some scenes that are inspired by other films, namely the scene in the car which is clearly a copy of Jurassic Park.

What goes wrong? Mainly a terrible script. This is for sure the first draft of something written in a very short time. They watched Jurassic Park, Godzilla, and Lake Placid and copied almost everything. Dialogue is awful. It never feels natural, it's repetitive, it adds almost nothing, or when it adds a lot it's through exposition in scenes where NOBODY would discuss family problems.

Other things that go wrong? The director doesn't seem to know what to do and the editing is super erratic. The film varies from 30 to 30 seconds of scenery and with that, the rhythm of the action also varies. The excessive use of the shaky cam also does nothing good, as we often see nothing of what is happening on the screen. Is there still room for more critics? Well, there is definitely an excessive melodrama throughout with scenes dragging on endlessly.

In short, this had everything to go right, but almost everything went wrong. It's hard for me to speak well of a movie in which the creature emits a sound that shakes an entire movie theater but is only seen or heard by people when it's half a meter away from them (and they can hear the screams from people being attacked!). It would be hard for me to believe that in a situation like this, the population would behave that way, with many pretending to run and most walking calmly. Invest in good scripts, people, and make it make sense!

I was pretty hyped up for the film after I saw the trailer, unfortunately there wasn't a whole lot to back up my optimism. A lot of the dialogue is clunky and doesn't make sense, and it's pretty obvious whoever translated this put it through a machine without paying attention to the results. Some of the name changes were also very questionable like giving the characters American sounding names which honestly took me out of it. The plot is rushed but the movie itself is filled with plenty of filler scenes where the monster is just standing there. To its credit, that monster looks awesome and were well above many low-budget American monster movies so well done in that regard. Other than that, there's nothing to really keep holding your interest.

No pun intended - obviously I am making a joke here. Also no chicken (was hurt) either - but you knew about that. If you are into creature features, you will have quite the swell time. Really well done - the (special) effects we see here. I imagine this didn't have the biggest budget, yet it really delivers on that front (and back - another pun?).

One thing is for sure, you should never take away something that does not belong to you - I think that is a lesson everyone can learn from this movie. Suspend your disbelief and experience this with the characters - and a monster you may be able to sympathize with ... until it gets you between his teeth ... only slightly kidding with this ...