Tag Archives: creature features

Creature Feature Countdown

Godzilla made a pretty impressive return last weekend, thanks mostly to director Gareth Edwards‘s ability to spectacularly realize monster fight chaos. The old reptile deserved it, really, having been hashed and rehashed in dozens of ways since his birth in 1954. It put us in the  mood for other great creature features, so here is a perusal of some of our modern favorites.

5. The Host (2006)

In 2006, Korea’s Joon-ho Bong took his own shot at the Godzilla fable. The sci-fi import The Host, which tells the tale of a giant mutant monster terrorizing Seoul, has all the thumbprints of the old Godzilla movies: military blunder, resultant angry monster, terrorized metropolis. The film’s often comedic tone gives it a quirky charm, but seriously diminishes its ability to frighten. Host does generate real, claustrophobic dread when it focuses on a missing child, though. Along with its endearing characters, well-paced plot, and excellent climax, it makes for a worthy creature feature offering.

4. King Kong (2005)

That’s right, we are dismissing the 1933 original and, obviously, the 1976 debacle in favor of Peter Jackson’s remarkable feat of intimacy and CGI. Andy Serkis offers a stunning heartbeat for the giant ape, and Naomi Watts performs better with a green screen than most actors do with flesh and blood colleagues. Even Jack Black proves his mettle in an effort that reminds audiences of the surprising universality of the old tale.

3. The Thing (1982)

Another reboot makes the list. In 1982, John Carpenter reconsidered the old SciFi standby The Thing from Another World from a Cold War terror into a claustrophobic, icy bloodbath. A beard-tastic team of scientists on expedition in the Arctic takes in a dog. The dog is not a dog, though. Not really. And soon, in an isolated wasteland offering barely enough interior room to hold all the facial hair, folks are getting jumpy because there’s no knowing who’s not really himself anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC_teYGNxvE

2. Alien (1979)

After a vagina-hand-sucker-monster attaches itself to your face, it gestates inside you, then tears through your innards. Then it grows exponentially, hides a second set of teeth, and bleeds acid. How much cooler could this possibly be? Ridley Scott married haunted house tropes with SciFi creature feature scares to create maybe the greatest alien horror of all time.

1. Jaws (1975)

Thanks to a cantankerous mechanical shark and a relentlessly effective score, twentysomething Stephen Spielberg was able to create mounting dread like no one before him by relying on the audience’s imagination and showing little of his creature. It may have been partly unintentional, but the effect – along with maybe cinema’s greatest buddy threesome of Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss – created the most beloved, most influential creature feature of all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCjDa44S3kI

Oh No! There Goes Tokyo!

Godzilla

by Hope Madden

Movies love to depict our fear of science, a trend that dates back to Edison’s 1910 rendition of Frankenstein. But the real frenzy came with the onset of the atomic age.

Among the countless “creature features” spawned by our global fear of the destruction science had wrought, Godzilla reigned supreme. Ishiro Honda’s Hiroshima analogy simultaneously entertained and terrified as it tapped our horrified fascination with the destruction, once unthinkable, that was suddenly an ever-present danger.

Back in 2010, visual effects maestro Gareth Edwards tread similar ground of societal guilt, dread and terror with his underseen alien flick Monsters. More than anything, though, that film clarified his aptitude for creature action, a talent that serves him well for his Godzilla reboot.

He’s assembled a phenomenal cast for the monster mash up, though I’m not sure why. Award-winning actors Ken Watanabe, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Juliette Binoche and Aaron Taylor-Johnson appear onscreen (and do little else) as we wait for the epic battle between Godzilla and two new creatures with a taste for radiation.

Taylor-Johnson is a military bomb defusing expert who leaves his wife (Olsen) and their son behind in San Francisco to fly to Japan to bail his crazy scientist/grieving widower father (Cranston) out of jail. He’d been caught trespassing on a site quarantined for 14 years – ever since the nuclear reactor disaster that killed his wife.

Well, there’s more to that story than meets the eye.

The talent-laden cast doesn’t get the opportunity to flesh out their characters, so there’s little human drama to cling to as chaos approaches. Perhaps even more damaging, Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham’s screenplay fails to truly lay blame for this behemoth blood match on mankind.

Flaws aside, Godzilla delivers the creature feature goods. Few summer blockbusters contain such gloriously realized action sequences, gorgeously framed images of disarray, or thrillingly articulated beasts.

Edwards never hides his inspiration (the lead’s name is Brody, for God’s sake).  While he draws from Jaws, Aliens, Close Encounters, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and any number of previous Godzilla efforts, the amalgam is purely his own.

This is an easy franchise to take in the wrong direction. Who remembers Godzuki? But Edwards brings a competent hand and reverent tone to breathe new life into the old dinosaur.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars