Amphibious 3D

Brian Yuzna is one the few remaining, and still active, producers/directors who can pretty much afford themselves everything. After all, he's the man who made the world a much better place with immortal horror classics like "Re-Animator", "From Beyond", "Society" and "Return of the Living Dead III", and therefore we still owe him gratitude. Of course, it's been thirty years, and with duds like "Rottweiler" and "Beneath Still Waters", Yuzna's untouchable status started declining fast. The inept, derivative, and - quite frankly - boring "Amphibious" won't do his credit much good, neither.

Even in 2D, how I watched it, "Amphibious" clearly has good potential to be an undemanding and amusing creature-feature/giant monster flick. The opening sequences are also promising, with a young couple on holiday in Indonesia getting ripped to pieces by the tail of a humongous kind of sea-scorpion. Unfortunately, though, the plot then becomes unnecessarily convoluted and absurd. The monster is somehow spiritually linked to a child, and the marine biologist suffers from traumatic flashbacks. Who cares, we only want to see filthy Indonesian slaved traders getting devoured! Luckily, there's still a fair amount of gore the computerized special effects are reasonably decent. Yuzna is clever and experienced enough to only reveal small parts of the creature, and only show it in full during the finale.

Mildly interesting also, at least to some people, is that "Amphibious" is a co-production with unusual countries involved, like Indonesia and The Netherlands. Many of the crew members are Dutch or Belgian, and also lead actress Jenna Fassaert can't hide her ugly accent. I don't criticize her, though, since the entire cast terrible.

When I saw this at my local shop I bought it for two reasons, it was very cheap for being a real 3D but most of all it was the new Brian Yuzna flick. I knew him from the follow-ups of the Reanimator franchise so I knew he could make some gory flicks.

Looking towards the cover of the Blu ray it was clearly a rip-off of Piranha 3D and Piranha 3DD. Don't ever think that you will see that shot somewhere in Amphibious. It even goes a bit further on the negative kind. It has an SyFy or The Asylum overlook. This isn't a straight horror it's a pure creature feature but one of the CGI kind and making it more ridiculous is the fact that it's prehistoric.

I can dig the settings but I wasn't satisfied with the gore or horror. There isn't that much in it but when it does it's okay and even a bit gruesome but in fact it's more about saving children who are working as slaves on some kind of fishing thing. Of course Skylar (Janna Fassaert) do search for prehistoric life and so it comes that the creature is found but it also has to do with black magic.

You don't watch it for the acting because some acting is wooden as hell, Fassaert is okay but still it could have been a SyFy flick. Rather disappointed for a Yuzna flick.

On part of the 3D that was okay. If you watch it 2D you never will have the feeling that some shot were done for 3D. The 3D works now and then rather good and it does work throughout the whole movie. Shark Night 3D (2011) for example was only in 3D when there was action of the shark.

Guess a lot will hate Amphibious, pure for the creature freaks. Maybe the best thing was the start of the movie with the couple going for a swim, that delivered some good moments.

Gore 1,5/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 3/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

There's a great monster in Amphibious, and in that regard no-one will be disappointed. The story is sound, though hardly believable, but this is a movie. The script is cliche and seemed somewhat stuttered, as if made up at the time of filming. The actors can't do much with it to add to the believability, and in a lot of instances don't even try. Pretty good casting/characterisations. I suspect a very young filmmaker was behind this, as there are a lot of edits where it's pretty obvious there had been a cut in the filming, and insufficient care was taken to ensure a smooth continuity. The soundtrack, however, was very good. The sea location set was inspired and that alone managed to drag the piece to above average. I enjoyed it. It's not overly long, and there are plenty of interesting deaths, though a lot suffered from that lack of continuity I mentioned, and only basic attention was often given to various body parts emerging after attacks. It's a pass from me.

I watched this movie in lack of having better to watch. And my interest was heightened when I saw that Brian Yuzna was behind this movie.

And now that I have seen it, I sit here with somewhat of a feeling of having just sat through a late 80's - early 90's horror movie. It didn't seem like it was from 2010 at all. The storyline was pretty much what you've seen in movies back then.

The story is pretty vague. Some researcher is doing work in the ocean somewhere in Asia, and she comes upon some awakened monster that preys upon a local fishing platform. There is some sub-plots about Tamal, about children being held against their will as work slaves and such, but there never really was a greater red line throughout the movie. And you are left wondering, where did this monster come from, how could it have survived for that long, and most importantly of all, just a big why, why, why at most things in the movie.

"Amphibious" was dragged down by a tedious storyline that would have worked better back in the 80's or 90's, but even more so was weighed down by horrible dialogue and pretty bad acting. Sure there were moments of clarity, but in overall, the acting done by the native Indonesians cast for the movie was less than halfhearted. And also one thing comes to mind, why would they be speaking English and not Bahasa Indonesia at a remote location like that? It just didn't make sense.

Now, one of the two things the movie did have working in its favor, was that it worked well at building up suspense. Brian Yuzna is great at doing that, and managed to pull it off in "Amphibious" nicely enough. And the second part that worked well for the movie was the creature itself. Sure, you have to look past the fact that it is a gargantuan scorpion that lives under the water. But once you get past that stupid flaw, then the creature was actually nicely made, and it looked real enough. So hats off for the special effects team on "Amphibious".

I enjoy horror movies, and "Amphibious" was, sadly enough, below average. And I doubt that it is a movie that I will ever be sitting down with for a second watching. The movie is good enough for a single watching, then it is bagged, tagged and forgotten.

So this movie is a bit hard done by with the score at the moment I think (at a 3.8 as I write this) but unfortunately I can understand why people have given it that score.

This movie has a LOT of good points, the character writing is honestly great, the two main actors (the ships captain and the female marine biologist) are decent actors and the others are all reasonable too, the story is well thought through and keeps its focus throughout. Its also really well shot as well and the creature idea is quite unique. So why the low score?

Well despite doing all of that well, the fact is this is a creature feature film in which you really dont see the creature at all until the final scene. Before that the kills are all masked and quite unsatisfying. Its a creature feature film... which doesnt focus on the creature. Ultimately if you put this in hoping for some simple monster fun, you really dont get much of that.

Its honestly a real shame I would have liked to have given this a higher score.