Reptilian (2001)

Released in 2001, “Reptilian” was South Korea's attempt to hop onto the big monster movie bandwagon. Featuring laughable CGI, nonexistent acting and dimwitted characters, the movie was poorly received by both local and global audiences. It was thus cast into a level of obscurity so deep that it's being reviewed on Cinemartyr. Yikes.

While watching this movie, there's certainly an identifiable fervor behind what's going on. You can tell that director Hyung-Rae Shim did his best to create “something big,” a movie meant to compete among the likes of “King Kong” and “Godzilla.” However, “Reptilian” is littered with so many errors that it's impossible to take seriously.

Brilliant archaeologist, or total
douchebag? You make the call. 

We open up to Dr. Campbell (Richard Livingston), an egotistical archeologist leading a crew through an underground cave where they come across some hieroglyphics. The overzealous Campbell seizes control of the operation and orders the crew to dig immediately, resulting in a spontaneous, gargantuan explosion and the death of everybody in the crew excepting himself. This incident sparks the concern of Campbell's colleague, Holly (Donna Philipson, a woman who never acted in any other movies). She pulls Campbell aside and urges him to cool down a little bit, but Dr. Campbell can't be bothered to cool down [because he's an over-the-top antagonist with no motivation but his own personal gain.] He's an entertaining character, but simple Darwinian principle dictates that he dies a half hour in.

Campbell's foil is Dr. Wendell Hughes (Harrison Young), an older man who had originally been on the digging project. Once he realized how dangerous it was, he dropped out; now he spends night and day trying to convince government officials to stop Campbell. He later teams up with Holly to put an end to what the moronic Campbell started. It's worth mentioning that the acting is hilariously bad. It feels very much like these people were just dragged in off the street and ordered to act.

Anyways, once Dr. Campbell is gone, our antagonistic focus shifts to a spontaneously-arisen monster. Thus, the movie instantly loses all structure and the rest of our time is spent with a heaping helping of the typical “impervious monster, machine guns & explosions” deal. It's obvious that “Reptilian” takes cues from the sorts of monster movies that disregard the story for the sake of mindless action. However, there's one little problem: the CGI.

“Reptilian”'s most glaring error is its CGI without a doubt. This can easily be attributed to the movie's nine million dollar budget. (For context, the 1998 remake of “Godzilla” had a budget of $138 million). When watching a CG movie, an oft-pondered question is: “When can I tell that this CG sorta looks fake?” Conversely, “Reptilian”'s CG is amazingly fake to the point of wondering if there's a moment that looks real.

When the CGI kicks in, “Reptilian” also dives into a world of convoluted plot points and missed opportunities. For example, Hughes has been legally dead for two years. This could have been an interesting twist if handled properly. It wasn't. This may cause you to tentatively ask, “How many pointless, convoluted plot points can they toss in here?” Try this on for size: the monster, named Yongarry, was actually placed on Earth by aliens for humans to eventually dig up. Once unearthed, the aliens activate him via a transmitter in his head. Once the humans discover that they can deactivate the transmitter, it turns out Yongarry actually wants to help their race fight the aliens. In result, the aliens send ANOTHER monster down to fight Yongarry. You followed all that okay, right? I know I did after watching this 100-minute movie FIVE times.

“Reptilian” fails to hold the audience's attention with its action scenes alone, but the interestingly bad acting

and convoluted story turn its charm factor up quite a bit. Since all giant dino monster movies are more or less the same, you'd probably be better off watching old Godzilla flicks if the previously mentioned charm factor isn't enough to reel you in. It's worthy of a single viewing, but that's about it.