KONG: SKULL ISLAND

Publicity poster (top) and film still (bottom) for Kong: Skull Island (© Jordan Vogt-Roberts/Legendary Pictures/Tencent Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My visit to the local cinema on 22 March 2017 was to see the newly-released but long-anticipated monster movie Kong: Skull Island.

 

Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and set in 1973, its storyline focuses upon a secret team of scientists and military muscle sent by an equally covert US government organization named Monarch to the recently-discovered, mist-enshrouded, totally-unexplored Skull Island. Their mission is to seek out and find huge hidden monsters – a task that they turn out to be inordinately adept at achieving, much to their increasing alarm and peril!

 

Sandwiched fore and aft between two Godzilla movies, Kong: Skull Island is the second entry in the ongoing MonsterVerse film series created by Legendary Pictures.

 

 

My fully-poseable 18-inch-tall King Kong action figure released by Lanard Toys in official conjunction with Kong: Skull Island in 2016 (© Dr Karl Shuker/Lanard Toys/Warner Bros. Pictures)

Whereas I feel that Tom Hiddleston (playing James Conrad, a former British SAS captain leading the expeditionary party to Skull Island) has been unfairly panned by the critics, the monsters are zoologically implausible to say the least (yet thoroughly entertaining nonetheless). Having said that, in any film featuring a gorilla the height of the Empire State Building or thereabouts, this fact was never going to be unexpected.

Starring alongside Hiddleston is Samuel L. Jackson as US Army soldier and helicopter squadron leader Lieut.-Col. Preston Packard. Other famous names include John Goodman as senior Monarch official Bill Randa; and Brie Larson as investigative photo-journalist Mason Weaver – the Fay Wray counterpart of this latest King Kong movie outing.

Other than Kong himself, naturally, who is represented here as a truly gargantuan animate tower of coruscating CGI fury when threatened but traditionally gentle toward the gentle sex, my own particular favourite monster is what initially appears to be a fair-sized algae-covered hillock, mysteriously rising above the water surface of a huge lake. However, this odd-looking object soon reveals itself to be the humped back of a truly humongous amphibious yak-like ungulate – a veritable bovine behemoth, in fact, but which proceeds to stare impassively at Hiddleston's armed-and-ready Captain Conrad with cud-chewing indifference. I've been (semi-)reliably informed that it is officially known as a sker buffalo, and it can be seen in the film still that opens this present Shuker In MovieLand review.

The giant Kong-sized skullcrawler (© Jordan Vogt-Roberts/Legendary Pictures/Tencent Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures– reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

As expected in all the best cryptozoology-themed monster movies, there are the obligatory giant invertebrates, including a squid-octopus combo critter, a forest canopy-concealed spider with enormous bamboo-mimicking vertical legs, and a grotesque parasitised stick insect. These mostly lurk unseen for much of their screen time but with murderous intent aplenty. There are also some very weird giant flying beasts called leafwings. However, Skull Island's principal monstrous villains this time round are a grotesque two-limbed reptilian lineage known as skullcrawlers.

The skullcrawlers live underground but surface periodically to wreak havoc and horror upon their human victims, with the skullcrawler numero uno being a colossal monster of comparable proportions to Kong himself. Morphologically, the skullcrawlers are truly bizarre, looking something like what might be the macabre outcome if ever a gigantic tatzelworm (click here to read all about this creature of cryptozoology on my ShukerNature blog) or a ginormous lindorm (ditto here) and an immense wingless pterodactyl ever got it together - but without these latter beasts' charm!

The film purists have scoffed, are scoffing, and no doubt will continue to scoff, but I never go to monster movies to expect zoological reality, I go for awesome special effects and escapism, and this film more than delivers on both counts for me. Click here to check out this action-packed trailer, and see for yourself. As for the plot: look, guys, this is a monster movie - you weren't really expecting a plot, surely??

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE! 

Monkeying around with a 30-ft-tall King Kong model at Wookey Hole's Valley of the Dinosaurs in Somerset, England, September 2010 (© Dr Karl Shuker)