Recensioni degli utenti

I first came to know of The Asylum through their infamous Mega Shark series and other wacky monster films, which were fun trash to watch (key word being "fun"). So, when I heard they were doing their own version of the classic Monster Island (an idea first introduced in the Godzilla franchise), I was curious to see. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

So, the plot goes that a deep-sea prospecting expedition disturbs a kaiju, which threatens the world. While the military tries in vain to kill the creature, a team of scientists heads out to find an equally powerful beast to stop it. Sounds like a nice setup for all kinds of crazy carnage, right? Too bad, barely anything happens. The Asylum is known for making films featuring mass destruction and over-the-top action but this film surprisingly underplays it. Anything that is remotely exciting happens literally for a few seconds at a time with the rest just being the characters just observing and talking for long stretches of time. Monster Island itself isn't even the main focus, only appearing within the climax of the film and the actual "battles" between the monsters are uneventful and last as long as a blink of an eye.

I'll give the film credit that the graphics and animation have improved somewhat since the first Mega Shark, the creature designs are decent, most of the acting is adequately straightforward with a few silly performances, and the kaiju lore is okay if derivative. Sadly, this is all bogged down given how there's little payoff or excitement to be had here. All in all, "Monster Island" is a snooze and should simply be skipped.

The Asylum have the odd watchable effort, but never has their best work really been more than that. Most of the time though, their output is rarely above mediocre and even often terrible, the worst without any redeeming qualities. Yet there is something compulsive about their relatively consistent badness, speaking as somebody who does not actually mind low-budget and can get enjoyment out of this kind of story, as long as some kind of effort is obvious.

'Monster Island', starting off on a kind note or at least an attempt an honest attempt of a kind note if it doesn't come over that year, is not one of The Asylum's worst. Nowhere near, although there is hardly anything good in 'Monster Island' to me (did have to look hard for them too) it isn't completely irredeemable like their worst efforts are. This is from personal perspective of course. Still found it monstrously bad, the flaws are many, almost every other way, and they are not small, huge actually. Saying this with regret not malice, and there is much more to the problem than being derivative.

Its least bad asset is the production design, the one asset where effort was obvious. Though this is only marginally so rather than significantly so. A particularly good job was done with the caves as has been said already. Some of the photography was okay.

Elsewhere, the production values were really poorly done and that the film was made on the cheap is obvious. It looks pretty drab, but it's the disorganised looking editing and last minute looking visual effects, that would even look out of date in the 50s, that come off worst. The submarine is used poorly and there is nothing authentic about it, it didn't look like a submarine and looked like it was filmed in a tank. What can be remembered of the music has very little presence and the film might as better well not had music at all because it didn't fit, added nothing and wouldn't have sounded appealing on its own.

Was expecting little from the script, and it turned out to be worse than expected with the cheese and awkwardness too frequently being rather hard to take. Predictability was hardly unexpected and would have tolerated it, providing that there was some degree of fun and suspense. Unfortunately, 'Monster Island' completely failed to be fun, even on a guilty pleasure level, and the stupidity became intelligence-insulting and exhausting after a while. The suspense was also absent and the whole film felt dreary. The monster action is limited, or at least what the underused creatures are given to do. What there was leaves one confused, bored and shouting at the screen in frustration and the creatures have little personality let alone menace or soul.

Got the sense that the director Mark Atkins had little plan of how to direct or structure 'Monster Island' or what to do with it or that his heart was barely in it. The characters were neither interesting or worth rooting for, there is so little to them in personality or development, their nonsensical decision making is both frustrating and disreacting and how they're written has been seen before many times. The acting is poor at best, the biggest name being Eric Roberts who acts like a sleepwalking robot.

Concluding, very bad. 2/10

Two employees of marine researcher Billy Ford (Adrian Bouchet) discover a giant starfish on the ocean floor which has lava for blood. Annoyed by the submarine, the starfish rises to the surface, slaps a couple of ships and then decides to head for the coast to lay eggs. Ugly little dragons are hatching from these eggs and start to puke lava at anyone they meet. Bad, bad babies! General Horne (Eric Roberts) summons the army in vain to solve the monster problem. Billy Ford, however, meanwhile simply attempts to find a bigger monster and arrange a battle of the two...

Another ludicrous 'Pacific Rim' rip-off from the Asylum factory line which was ok most of the running time (I voted 4 of 10). The actors were passable, some locations looked good, for example the Swiss cheese caves, the pacing was never lame, and the effects were what you expect from suffering similar experiences.

Where the hell are the monsters??? Glimpses and pieces... nothing I'd watch ever again and I love these kinds of movies!

Eric Roberts. WHY hire him? WHY WHY? He wasn't wearing the correct uniform and needed a haircut BADLY for being in the "navy".

The submarine existed of about $100 worth of materials. It looked like those zero turn mower handles were on it. The hatch was thinner than an aluminum garbage can lid. They did put 4 over size pressure gauges in the sub to make it look technical haha. This movie is NOT to be taken seriously. When the sub comes out of the ocean you can see another object underneath it lifting it up above water. There were no "monsters" in this movie at all. Just very poor cgi 3 second glimpes of a limb or something.

I've seen better High School movie productions from up and coming film makers. Yes, is is that bad. Only watch if you want to shake your head from side to side at the utter amazement that someone even financed this movie.

If I was in it, I would not put this on my resume. I'd swear I must have had someone look like me and steal my name. Yes, once a gain. It is that bad.

Evidently, so far the ratings of 1 seem to actually be telling the truth. One very positive reviewer must be one of the stars relatives.

Why are these filmmakers still allowed behind a camera. Worse dreck in celluloid history. Looks like they walked up to some random guy on the street and said: Here's a thousand bucks to make a movie about kaigus, see what you can do. Apparently the guy pocketed 900 dollars and used the remaining 100 to hire some actors, director, sets and an etch a sketch for the effects. Of course I didn't watch this whole dreck; just FF to see how bad it could get. There should be a law.

Deep sea mining CEO battles kaiju in a tiny submarine. Yeah, it's that bad. The kaiju is half squid half starfish (sqarfish?) so it's officially the least interesting monster ever committed to celluloid. The acting is so wooden that it's a surprise the submersible can actually 'submerse'. The mining company's headquarters is a portakabin on the beach so that's clearly where most of the budget went. There's a lot of B movies where, with an open mind, you can enjoy them. This isn't one of them.

I am about as anti-Asylum as they come. I have never seen an Asylum film that was worth the first 5 minutes of watching. For some reason this one brought me to break my "No Asylum movies" rule. Maybe I was bored, tired, whatever. Watched it.

Surprisingly, it wasn't terrible. It's a little slow in places, but the story is interesting enough. The ending was ludicrous, as is typical of Asylum films, but it wasn't completely lame. The actors for once were reasonably decent. The directing wasn't half bad. The monster was a bit of fun.

So I'm giving it a 5-star "mediocre" rating. Almost gave it a 6 just because Asylum managed to finally produce a film that wasn't a complete loser. This had plot, story, directing, acting, goofy-but-not-stupid ending. Why, for Asylum this is almost prime roast... if one doesn't mind the flies swarming around. Besides, it's a Kaiju (giant monster) film. What are people expecting, brilliant conversation? Asylum. Kaiju. Face it... it could have been much worse. As in "Atlantic Rim" worse. Now that was a loser.

And not in a good way. Holy smokes Eric Roberts! This dude seems to have this personal goal that is very important to him. That goal is to make sure in every movie that he appears in, it's going to be worse than the one he was in before that. He has been attaining that goal for over twenty years. Way to go Eric. He says as long as people will continue to pay him, he will keep on keeping on. Everyone involved in the making of this movie should be embarrassed. I have a feeling though that Eric is not one of them. The dude has no shame.

Some very good actors dumped in a cast of lesser performers do their best to make this liw-budget monster film watchable. I had a few decent laughs!

I haven't seen the others, but with this just aired I tried to watch it openly. I would suggest 1 thing . **TRY AGAIN** I'm no scholar in Filmography, I only know so little from my past humanities course of how the lighting, position of people, and camera angle matter blah blah Blah. (the list can go on). With this movie, I'm going to just say this Children might enjoy this maybe, But if you are a Movie Fanatic who likes classics to just good movies. This one won't do justice. my hint: NEEDS MORE of Everything..

I was looking forward to the low-budget mirth promised by this low-cost affair that promised to be a cheap-and-cheerful Godzilla/Pacific Rim romp, but it is really, really, really bad. The monster action is pretty limited and a giant lava-filled starfish is not really my idea of a menacing giant terror, I must say. This might be mitigated with a likeable and engaging cast of human characters, but alas...Sometimes Asylum films deliver the so-bad-it-is-great goods to at least entertain in a perverse way, but this effort is just dispiriting and beyond dull - which is a crime for a mammoth-beast-on-the-rampage flick. In terms of the nominal star, I thought that The Cloth must surely be the nadir of Eric Roberts' career, but apparently not. Hopefully The Killers will soon come a-calling for him to appear in another one of their videos so that he can say no to the next Asylum call.

So, my advice regarding this film is this: don't weigh anchor at this island, just sail on to a better movie.

This movie is so funny I'm doing my own riffs. How could the writer confuse a General with an Admiral? Yes, a General in an Admiral's uniform is in charge of the Navy. Or is it the Coast Guard? No one knows and it's not important.

No matter. We are in the world of fantasy. But it's funny fantasy. I love the operator who is constantly peeing his pants about the danger of being in this little submarine fighting a humongous starfish. He seems to be the only sane person on board.

Let me count the absurdities. When they are out of the water they are running out of oxygen. When they are in the water, they can't fill their ballast tanks. (with water, which is all around them!).

That's my review for the first half of the movie. I may have to write another review for the last half. But that's based on the premise that it will get funnier, which I think is highly unlikely.

I'm clicking the button for ".. this review does not contain spoilers." I think it would take a direct hit with an H-bomb to spoil this movie. You can't spoil sauerkraut.

The heart is in the right place - is that not enough? For most probably not. You can "watch" this, while doing the laundry, making coffee, cleaning the house and so forth. And you would approximately have the same enthusiasm as Eric Roberts does - well his character that is, but I mean his ... work for that role.

Who am I kidding and who is the movie kidding? No one. You may be enticed and you may like low budget fare like this (Asylum does have a reputation and they do a lot of these movies) - or you may not. Just be aware of what you are about to watch and don't blame the movie afterward if you wasted precious life time of yours ...

The minute you see "The Asylum" you know the Cheese is strong with this one, so go in with the right mind set and you'll enjoy it. The story is straight forward and easy to follow avoiding some of the slightly disjointed writing of the earlier movies. The acting is good enough with the B movie stalwart Eric Roberts in a secondary role (who if IMDB is to be believed have 99 projects completed, filming, in post production or in pre production not someone who likes to stand idle) The CGI is serviceable and certainly better than 'Atlantic Rim' it is a giant monster movie in the vein of their Mega shark Vs movies (can you tell I have watched way too many The Asylum movies) . If you're fan a B monster movies then it is a fun and harmless way to kill 90 minutes.

I love a good sci-fi movie but this isn't one of them. The acting reminds me of a high school play where all the actors are trying to out act the other one. They have a wimpy assistant, a know it all other assistant and a boss who shouldn't be the boss as he appears to be really dumb. There is a general who is in desperate need of a haircut who is the worst over actor ever. The monsters are poor at best so basically this is a terrible movie. If I were you I would not waste your time.

I watched this and really enjoyed the movie, finding it to be good, fun, easy entertainment after working hard all day. The acting was good, the special effects worked well enough to keep me focused on the action and the story. The selection of actors was great. Natalie Robbie (who played Sarah Murray) caught my eye in particular since she reminds me very much of Dana Plato (Kimberly Drummond of Diff'rent Strokes).

My only problem with the movie was the final few minutes. The build-up throughout the movie was good but then it felt like they just "capped off" the movie with a TV episode type of ending. I would have expected something like this from a down-market "monster of the week" show, not a one-off movie.

I know some folks will say, "Ahhh, but this was an Asylum film" and maybe they are right. I don't know one movie company from another. I just had higher expectations given the rest of the two hours that I had spent watching it. Oh well!

If/when it comes out on DVD, I will definitely add it to my collection. I just kind of hope that they put "alternate endings" on the disc, similar to what was done for the comedy movie "Clue" back in 1985. I'd like to see something more satisfying.