Monster Island is a horror flick from 2025. It initially reminded me of the old sci-fi film Enemy Mine in the very premise of the movie. You know, two people stranded on something unknown.,. may it be a remote island or some distant planet. It doesn’t really matter. They are there, and so is the common enemy. It faster paced than Enemy Mine ever was, though. It doesn’t take very long for the two stranded people to get an understanding of each other and overcome their rivalry.
It takes place in the late stages of WWII. A Japanese ship with POWs is the first set. We get some backstory that the Japanese used their prisoners of war as slave labor or something like that. Some kind of situation occurs, and suddenly there’s a shipwreck. Two people, chained together, a Japanese soldier and a British soldier, are forced to rely on each other for survival.
Soon they (and we) discover that there is something on the island that is far deadlier to them than they ever should be to each other. At first we get to see glimpses of it, as is the usual way to tell the story of the monster. What we don’t fully see or understand is often the things we are most afraid of. The filmmakers know this, of course, and show us as little as possible, yet enough to make us feel intrigued.
Early on, we can tell that the monster, if we are going with that term for a creature that we don’t understand, is amphibian. I’m not sure if it has gills and all that, but it clearly has developed some fins and other things that make it easier to move around in water. It is an island, after all, so it can’t be wrong to have enhanced abilities underwater, right?
As we see more and more of it, I think it looks like a crossover between the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Rawhead Rex, if that makes sense? Maybe you can throw in a bit of Gorn from Star Trek in there as well for good measure. And I don’t mean any of this in a bad way; I think the creature is fine. I like its appearance!
It’s obviously played by an actor in some kind of suit since it’s kind of humanoid. It seems to be the easiest way to go around and make a thing like this. It’s very believable, I would say. As are the makeup effects. There are some rolling heads and some limb tearing. Maybe a little more gory than you’re used to in a film like this, but I think it adds to the realism. Also, the wear and tear of the soldiers looks pretty authentic. So, overall, an excellent effort in that department.
What I would have liked is a little more development between the two war enemies, forced to join a common course and becoming friends in the process. It’s a little too fast development, I think. They almost immediately start to connect and trust each other very quickly. That might not be so realistic. If you’re in a war and chained to your enemy, I think you still will have a very hard time trusting the other person. Partly because I think that war in itself is such a propaganda machine. The soldiers are indoctrinated with the evil of the enemy, especially in the era in which the film takes place. By it may also be me overanalyzing and oversimplifying things.
We kind of see the ending coming. There’s no place for happiness, only grief and nostalgia. The friendship, heroic actions, and self-sacrifice are at the center of the story. Meanwhile, I don’t think the creature is really as evil as the film tries to tell us. Again, I might be overanalyzing things. But wouldn’t you try to defend your territory if someone entered your backyard and posed a threat to your kin? I think it’s a fundamental thing. A thing we share with other species of animals. Therefore, there is no winning side here; there is only loss. As the saying goes, a war can’t be won; a war is a loss. The same goes with any violent conflict!
