MONSTER HUNTER (2020) Review
With fifteen feature film credits under his belt as director, Paul W.S. Anderson has pretty decisively established himself as a filmmaker with a particular interest in two things: action and horror. Anderson made a name for himself all the way back in 1995 with the original movie adaptation of the Mortal Kombat video games, subsequently directing the space horror nightmare Event Horizon and the mashup fight film Alien vs. Predator. Of course, he also brought the Resident Evil games to the big screen with a franchise he kicked off and regularly returned to the director’s chair for. It should come as no surprise then that his latest movie isn’t just another action-horror extravaganza, but also another video game adaptation.
Capcom’s expansive world of big blades and even bigger monsters comes to the big screen for the very first time in Paul W.S. Anderson’s Monster Hunter, which again re-teams the director with real-life wife (and a bonafide action heroine if there ever was one) Milla Jovovich. This time around, Jovovich isn’t the zombie-slaying Alice but rather the monster-slaying Artemis, a Lieutenant in the army who is transported (along with her crew) into an alternate world that lives beside our world. This world, as you might imagine, is filled with giant monsters, and she’s forced to team with a fighter from the monster world (Tony Jaa) to survive.
While he hasn’t recently been known to faithfully adapt video games — the Resident Evil films, much to the dismay of many longtime players, put the focus far more on action than horror, centered on a brand new main character not even present in the games at all — Paul W.S. Anderson is unquestionably a filmmaker who understands how to make movies that feel like video games, and Monster Hunter may very well be his crowning achievement in that department. Anderson cuts right to the chase in an effort to fast forward right to the “gameplay,” kicking off the film with an epic “cutscene” involving a boat and a monster and wasting little time in establishing the mythology of this world. There’s our world and there’s a much more treacherous world filled with monsters, and we’re about to hang out in the latter world for the next 90 minutes. So why wait? It’s less than 10 minutes into the runtime before Artemis and her fellow soldiers are smack dab in the middle of monster world, and the subsequent 83 minutes of Monster Hunter live up to both title and game.
Monster Hunter runs just about 93 minutes minus the end credits, and more than 30 minutes of that runtime is devoted to straight up monster fighting action. Sure, this means things like character development and carefully plotted storytelling are largely thrown by the wayside, but it hardly matters when Anderson’s latest so wonderfully makes good on the simple promises it sold you on. Rarely does a monster movie so fully deliver the monster mayhem you’re looking for, and it’s notable that Monster Hunter is supremely dedicated to making sure you can actually see both monsters and mayhem. Anderson and cinematographer Glen MacPherson pull back the camera for countless wide shots that establish the scale of the settings and the various monsters that fill them out, and it’s a testament to Anderson’s franchise-appropriate sensibilities that much of that monster action takes place in broad daylight. Jovovich rides the Diablos like a bucking bronco and Jaa flies through the air to cut a spider-monster’s head in half with a game-accurate sword (in slow-motion, naturally), all of it brought to the screen with the kind of crystal clear, wide-shot clarity you rarely get in modern big budget action spectacles such as this one.
And while yes, the monster fights do take priority over all else, as they very well should in a movie titled Monster Hunter that’s based on a video game titled Monster Hunter, it’s a credit to both Jovovich and Jaa that their characters, Artemis and The Hunter, are so damn likable even without a whole lot of development. Their chemistry makes them an on-screen duo you’ll have a blast hanging out with, which helps to make even the downtime in Monster Hunter (and there’s not much of it) a delight. Artemis and The Hunter begin their friendship with a close-quarters hand-to-hand fight that never seems to end before realizing they have a common enemy and therefore should probably work together, and soon become a lovable monster-fighting duo with a sort of antagonistic brother-sister relationship. They’re great together, with their collective charms elevating what were likely fairly dull characters on the written page.
As for the other characters, it’s probably not a spoiler to say that most of them don’t actually make it very far. And though Monster Hunter is a PG-13 movie, Anderson manages to dispatch his cast in some pretty nasty ways. There’s one bit involving a character being invaded by monstrous parasites that goes particularly hard on the horror, and Anderson does a good job suggesting vicious monster murders without showing too much. The monsters themselves are similarly slain in suggestively graphic fashion, even if Anderson does make sure to keep everything PG-13. There’s very little blood to be found in Monster Hunter but you probably won’t mind anyway, as the film’s got enough teeth and visual pop to make up for it.
On the subject of how faithful Monster Hunter is to the video games that inspired it, that’s a question I’m not exactly the right person to answer as I’ve only played one of the games (Monster Hunter World) and admittedly never finished it. But from what I’ve played and seen of the world, Anderson’s Monster Hunter is at least a fairly accurate representation of the basic gist. The film features video game monsters like the Diablos, Rathalos and Nerscylla, all of them faithfully designed and wonderfully realized with a whole lot of big-budget CGI. The film’s weapons, particularly its big blades, are undeniably plucked from the world of the Monster Hunter video games (and we do get a nice montage that’s akin to the weapons/armor upgrading feature), and Anderson even makes sure to work in side characters like the Admiral (played by Ron Perlman, rocking this year’s most epic movie wig) and yes, even a Palico. While we don’t see much of the Palico, it’s great to see him in the movie at all, and Anderson is keenly aware that you’re probably going to be wanting more in a potential sequel down the line. On that note, be sure to watch through the end credits!
Delivering all the monster-fighting action you could ask for, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Monster Hunter may not be one of the best movies of the year but it’s damn sure one of the most entertaining. And most importantly, it’s exactly the movie it ought to be, a video game movie that feels like a video game and a monster movie that’s a full-on monster movie in the truest, purest and simplest sense. Anderson throws you headfirst into a video game world and goes wild playing around in it for an hour and a half, commendably wasting little time in making sure you understand how the hell jacked up cat-people fit into the story or why/how there even is a monster world that runs parallel to our own. There’s a whole lot about Monster Hunter that would seemingly be hard to adapt in the form of a Hollywood movie that’ll surely be watched by many people who have never played a second of the games, but Anderson doesn’t let himself get bogged down by all the mythology or world building. It’s just there and he’s going to play around with it; whether you dig it or not, well, that’s up to you.
When Jovovich’s Artemis gets her first look at the Palico, perhaps an even stranger sight than the giant monsters she’s already by this point become adept at killing, she visibly ponders what the hell she’s even looking at. Ron Perlman’s Admiral nonchalantly replies, “What, you don’t have cats in your world?” Artemis accepts the explanation with a simple smile, and that’s your introduction to one of the wackier elements of the Monster Hunter world. It’s a moment that perfectly exemplifies Anderson’s take on the material, an approach that smartly puts fun at the forefront rather than wasting time wallowing in the tedium of explanation and exposition.
With Monster Hunter, Anderson touches upon the key features of the Monster Hunter world but leaves so much room for exploration going forward — for starters, we only see two different areas of the world itself, a barren desert landscape ruled over by an underground beast (a location that’s admittedly drab and one we probably spend a little too much time in) and a more lush, colorful environment where dinosaur-like herbivores roam — and in a perfect world we’ll indeed be seeing a whole lot more from this team, and this property, in the near future. Even the final moments of Monster Hunter feel more like a sequel tease than a genuine conclusion to the story, making it pretty clear that Anderson and the studios are very much interested in heading further down this path. Here’s hoping the film’s unfortunate theatrical release during a pandemic doesn’t completely kill its chances of making enough money to warrant a sequel, because I for one would love to see more wacky action-horror cut from this particular cloth.
And if we do get more Monster Hunter beyond this movie, here’s hoping Anderson brings back Paul Haslinger to score the next one. Haslinger, who was part of Tangerine Dream back in the 1980s, brings a wonderful video game-like synth score to the table here, and it plays a large part in making sure the action sequences hit all the right notes. Full disclosure, the score has been playing in my head the whole time I’ve been writing this review.
If you’re part of the crowd it’s intended for, you’ll have a blast with this one.
