Blood Monkey Thailand,
NR, 90 m, 2007
Blood Monkey
is an almost passable creature feature
that holds off until its last few frames before finally offering up a full view
of its featured creature. But that’s precisely how the film—in spite of its
poorly defined characters and exasperatingly by-the-numbers plot—keeps us
watching. Yes, I’m sure the lanky budget (this is, after all, a
straight-to-video release) played a part in keeping the man-eating monkey in the
shadows, but restricting most of the monster’s screen time to a blood-soaked
claw here or a set of glowing yellow eyes there ratchets up the intensity to an
all but unbearable level. (You never know when the damned thing is going to jump
out of the foliage and put an end to some randy couple’s tryst.) Steven
Spielberg learned the value of that old adage “less is more” when he made Jaws:
endless malfunctions with the mechanical shark, Bruce, forced the director to
come up with other ways to establish the beast’s presence. And as it turned
out, a shot of a rubber fin slicing through the water to the ill-omened notes
of John Williams’ Oscar-winning score was more than enough; your imagination
filled in the rest—and what the imagination conjures up is often scarier than
the real thing anyway. (Though when Bruce finally got it together for his
close-up at the film’s halfway mark, Spielberg delivered one of the screen’s
greatest scares since Norman Bates’ knife-wielding alter ego interrupted
Marion Crane’s shower in Psycho.) Don’t misunderstand me: Blood
Monkey is nowhere near the league of Jaws (few films are), but
financial limitations help make what could’ve been just another dumb piece of
monster mash (and I’m going by the laughably low-grade CGI work in the final
shot) into an often-unsettling bodycount flick. Just don’t expect too much in
the way of wit or sophistication; this is the kind of simian scare fest where the
killer ape’s POV is indicated by a red lens filter. Yep,
it’s Gorillas in the Mist meets Predator. If anything, Blood Monkey creates a believable
atmosphere; you can almost feel the moist and heavy jungle air. (Kudos to
cinematographer Choochart Nantitanyatada—now that’s a mouthful—for giving
the picture a champagne luster on a beer budget.) Six attractive grad students
(Seth, Amy, Greg… ah, who cares?) venture deep into a tropical forest
somewhere in Thailand to take part in an exhibition with a renowned
anthropological professor, Conrad Hamilton (F. Murray Abraham putting the
“ham” in Hamilton). But the kids start feeling a tad uneasy when their
escort throws them out of his truck well before their destination. “I no
go,” he tells them. “Bad things in there.” Well, any horror fan knows that
this is a sign to hightail it back to where you came from, but the kids
(educated ignoramuses all) resolve to push forward. When they finally catch up to Hamilton, something tells
them that he’s not being entirely forthcoming. For starters, he won’t abide
any contact with the outside world, and orders his pretty but lethal assistant,
Chenne (who’s familiar with martial arts), to confiscate their cell phones.
Later, when one of the girls asks Hamilton to explain what became of the other
group of students that was supposed to be joining them on the safari, he looks
this way and that way and then changes the subject. The next morning, the team
realizes that one of their female members didn’t return from pinching a loaf
the night before, and Hamilton’s story about sending her back to the world
just doesn’t wash. The students’ suspicions are finally confirmed when they
uncover Hamilton’s game: the dirty so-and-so is using them as bait to help
capture a flesh-eating monkey that he believes to be the missing link between
apes and humans. The kids that Hamilton serves up to the ravenous primate
are all stock B-picture characters: a bespectacled nerd, a horny jokester, a
curvaceous bimbo—well, you get the picture. Of course, we don’t invest
one iota of feeling in any of the victims because we know that they’re all
damned from the get-go. Truth to tell, I can’t recall when it became customary
for these pictures to kill off all of their main characters, but by denying us
even one survivor to carry out the monster’s annihilation, there’s no reprieve from our
distress and no hope for a brighter tomorrow. Without a cathartic finish,
everything for which these poor souls fight and suffer is ultimately all for
naught. What are we supposed to take from a movie where a bad cartoon monkey
(with human gore dribbling from its pie hole) wins the day? Still, I can think
of far worse ways to piss away a Sunday afternoon. March 21, 2008 “Blood Monkey” Review. © Copyright 2008 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.
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