By Robert Scucci
| Published
I’ll be the first person to tell you that I’m not much of a gamer, and had no clue that Monster Hunter was based on a long-running Capcom video games series of the same name before firing up the title on Hulu. I went into my viewing experience blind, so please take this review with a grain of salt, as I have no context for the game’s lore and worldbuilding, and can only report back on what I saw in cinematic form. Viewing Monster Hunter under these conditions, in a complete vacuum as a standalone piece, I’ve got to say that it’s worth a watch for its action sequences alone.
In fact, I can really only speak about Monster Hunter’s action sequences, because not much else really happens in this Paul W.S. Anderson film, which as far as I can tell, is by design.
Hardly Any Dialogue At All
Monster Hunter follows US Army Ranger Natalie Artemis (Milla Jovovich) after she and her crew are whisked away to a strange dese full of underground monsters known as Diablos. Natalie, the only survivor after enduring an attack from the underground monsters, encounters The Hunter (Tony Jaa), a seasoned warrior who speaks an unfamiliar language. At first enemies, the two pantomime their way into a reluctant partnership with a common goal in mind, which is to kill whatever monsters appear in their path as they traverse the treacherous desert landscape in order to find the Sky Tower, where the portal back to Natalie’s realm is hidden.
Along the way, they meet Ron Perlman’s Admiral, who explains that the portal was built by the first civilization to successfully travel between worlds, and how monsters like the Diablos and fire-breathing Rathalos were tasked with protecting the Sky Tower.
Though I didn’t physically count the words in Monster Hunter’s screenplay, I have reason to believe that the Wikipedia article has more text on it describing the events that play out on screen than words spoken in the movie itself.
Should Have Been Animated
While I was thoroughly impressed by the creature design, action sequences, and sparse dialogue that favored showing over telling in Monster Hunter, the heavy use of CGI took me out of the film quite a bit. In my mind, movies that take place in fantastical realms and use an excessive amount of special effects to get the job done should just be animated because it’s two-thirds (or more) of the way there to begin with. As much as I loved the choreography and landscapes, part of me thinks that Monster Hunter would have been better served by computer-generated likenesses of Milla Jovovich and company as a means to better emulate its source material by fully leaning into its out-of-this-world setting.
In my effort to fully enjoy Monster Hunter for what it is, which is a fantasy flick that favors stylish action sequences over exposition (this is not a complaint), I found myself squinting so the imagery would look just a little more realistic.
The dynamic between Natalie Artemis and The Hunter was fascinating to watch play out because they communicate primarily with hand signals and grunts while bonding over what little scraps of food they can sustain themselves with while trying to wrestle literal demons to the ground as they fight for their lives, one massive sand dune and stampede of monsters at a time. But it’s hard to stay emotionally invested in the story and their relationship when the heavily rendered graphics dull their exchanges.
Streaming Monster Hunter
On its face, Monster Hunter boasts a bare-bones plot, but has likeable enough characters who allow you to sit back, and watch the pretty exploding pictures without forcing you to take in decades of video game lore to pick up what it’s throwing down. That is to say, I quite enjoyed Monster Hunter for its willingness to fold simple storytelling into a sprawling, complex, and frightening place that Natalie so clearly wants to escape.
As of this writing, you can stream Monster Hunter on Hulu.
