Monster Island

by Hope Madden

Thanks in part to the success of Dan Trachtenberg’s 2022 Prey, period piece creature features have come into vogue. Nice!

Writer/director Mike Wiluan’s Monster Island (originally titled Orang Ikan) is the latest. In a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” two men—a Japanese traitor (Dean Fujioka) and a British POW (Callum Woodhouse)—are shipwrecked on an island in the Pacific. That chain that binds them together at the ankle is not the biggest obstacle to their survival. Certainly not the toothiest. 

Neither man speaks the other’s language, which is another hurdle Wiluan uses wisely. Thanks to subtitles, we know what each man says, and the moments when they don’t understand each other offer more about the story Monster Island is telling than the action ever could.

That’s not to disrespect the action. This is a nicely edited b-movie, cut to create the most tumult and action possible given the circumstance (meaning, the budget and the big rubber suit).

And while some of the early shipboard explosion footage is clearly (and not very convincingly) created digitally, the monster is not. That’s a benefit and a curse. It’s not to say Orang Ikan, the name given to the big island beastie by an unlucky castaway, looks bad. It just looks a little bit borrowed, sort of Predator meets Rawhead Rex (that underbite!) meets Creature from the Black Lagoon. In terms of screentime, less would probably have been more.

But both Fujioka and Woodhouse are so fully committed to their characters—an introvert haunted by his decisions and a punch-first-think-later Englishman—that the blossoming bromance makes up for whatever originality Orang Ikan lacks.

We spend 75% of the films brisk run time with just those three characters. In lesser hands, that could become tedious. But Wiluan and his dedicated trio deliver action and fun.