Movie Review: 'Monster Hunter' is Paul W. S Anderson's Best Movie

To say that Monster Hunter is the best movie in the career of director Paul W.S Anderson is undeniably, damning with faint praise. When a resume contains multiple Resident Evil movies, Event Horizon and the original Alien Vs Predator movie, topping your previous work is a relatively low bar to clear. But I have come to praise Monster Hunter and not to bury Paul W.S Anderson. Monster Hunter is truly not terrible.

Monster Hunter stars Milla Jovovich, the director’s wife and frequent collaborator, as military commander, Artemis. Captain Artemis is leading a team in an unnamed desert when their vehicle becomes entangled with a bizarre electrical storm. In a flash the team is catapulted across dimensions to a future Earth where the desert is ruled by monsters. Before the team, which includes rapper T.I, Meagan Good and Diego Boneta, among others, can get their bearings, they are attacked by a monster.

The monsters emerge from the desert floor and they are massive and deadly. The team scatters with most ending up in a nearby cave. This is not as fortuitous as it first appears as, inside the cave as the team tries to gather their wits, they are immediately interrupted by Captain Artemis being killed by a gigantic scorpion. The cave is crawling with massive scorpions and though Artemis does manage to survive death, the team is decimated in relatively quick fashion.

Artemis awakens from having been stung by a scorpion and manages to escape and survive due to the good luck that the scorpions are vulnerable to sunlight. Now out of the cave, Artemis encounters a man credited only as ‘The Hunter’ and played by international action star Tony Jaa. The Hunter does not speak English and the two are immediately at odds. Artemis and The Hunter meet and start a fight that lasts for much of the second act of the movie.

I’m not joking about the fight scene between Jovovich and Jaa. The fight starts at the beginning of the second act and goes on until past the midpoint of the movie. Eventually, after Artemis rescues The Hunter from some giant scorpions, and she gives him some chocolate, they become friends. The Hunter then sets about training Artemis to fight monsters because both need to find their way back to where the electrical storm is occurring.

Artemis theorizes that if the storm brought her to this dimension, it could take her back. As for The Hunter, he’s assuming that his friend and mentor, a sand pirate played by Ron Perelman, I’m not making that up, has a sand ship docked near the electrical storm. All the duo have to do is kill a bunch of giant monsters that look like what an eight year old might create if asked to draw a dinosaur from imagination. The monsters are cheesy looking but they are darn entertaining to watch.

Monster Hunter also features dragons and other weird creatures but I’ve said too much already. Monster Hunter won’t surprise you with its plot but you may want to have some aspects of the movie unspoiled. The biggest surprise is how watchable Monster Hunter is. Most Paul W.S Anderson movies are so unwatchably grim and populated by characters of such little depth that their adventures and eventual deaths have little to no resonance. Monster Hunter beats that problem by not trying to develop characters at all.

The action of Monster Hunter starts in the first minutes and does not let up for a single moment to allow characters to speak. Names of characters, a mere notion of who they are, or what they think of what is happening to them rarely is allowed to come up in Monster Hunter. The movie presents one unending action scene rolling into another unending action scene until the midpoint when Artemis and The Hunter pause to share a Hershey Bar.

This is actually a sound strategy for director Paul W.S Anderson whose weakest aspect of filmmaking is dialogue and character development. Cutting most of the dialogue and all of the character development doesn’t make Monster Hunter much of a movie but it does make it a fun bit of spectacle. Monster Hunter is much like Artemis and The Hunter’s Hershey bar, it may not be good for you but who doesn’t love chocolate.

Monster Hunter is like a snack in movie form. It’s delicious junk food as a movie. And the whipped topping is Ron Perelman channeling Will Ferrell if the comedian were cosplaying a Lord of the Rings orc. What don’t you love about that? I can’t defend Monster Hunter as a good movie or really as a movie at all. Monster Hunter is most certainly NOT a good movie. But, as a piece of ludicrous, videogame infused spectacle, I don’t hate it.