MONSTER ISLAND (aka ORANG IKAN, 2024)

New streaming on Shudder!
Directed/Written by Mike Wiluan.
Check out the trailer here!!

Near the end of World War II, a Japanese ship full of POW’s is gunned down in the middle of the Pacific by American submarines. The only two survivors, a captured British soldier named Bronson (Callum Woodhouse) and a Japanese soldier marked as a traitor named Saito (Dean Fujioka) are chained together and wash up on the beach of an uncharted desert isle. The two survivors try to kill one another once they awake on the shore but soon find that they must work together as an aquatic man-monster known as the Orang Ikan, is hunting them.

On face value, MONSTER ISLAND is a fun little monster movie. It doesn’t try to change the world but is a fast-paced tale of survival and monsters. Both Woodhouse and Fujioka are solid actors and bring their characters to life well as they try to murder each other on this island. But like many team ups between opposing forces seen in everything from ENEMY MINE to TOMMY BOY, the two learn to work together in order to accomplish their desires to live. Everything from the beach fight to the continuing fight with this monster was intriguing, well-choreographed, and moved along at a rapid-fire rate. There’s never a dull moment in MONSTER ISLAND, that’s for sure.

But the more I thought about MONSTER ISLAND, the more I felt like I was left with wanting more. There are a whole lot of details left out as this is an unknown species of monster the two soldiers are encountering and while there is someone who calls the creature Orang Ikan, we really get next to no backstory on the creature at all. Are these aliens? Are they some kind of mer-cryptid? How do they survive on this seemingly deserted island? And why does it want to murder these two soldiers so badly? And most importantly, it appears the monster doesn’t eat it’s victims, so why is it killing in the first place?

MONSTER ISLAND instead focuses heavily on the bonding process between Bronson and Saito and it turns out to be a touching story. Still, I think there could have been another pass on the script that made it possible for the viewer to understand a little more about this monster dedicated to killing them. Maybe Saito had heard camp fire tales as a kid about the Orang Ikan, so he knows a bit about them from his folklore. Or maybe some kind of ruins could have been found telling the tale of these beasts in glyphs. I don’t know, but as the credits rolled by, I found myself feeling kind of empty. Like there was so much potential in the story that wasn’t taken advantage of.

The monster looks really good. A full body practical costume with an articulated jaw, five-inch-long claws that would make Niecy Nash envious, and a crabby attitude. The jungle action definitely gave me PREDATOR vibes, but aside from one attack on the beach, the aquatic nature of the monster isn’t really broached in the story. MONSTER ISLAND had a lot of potential but I wanted a bit more. It’s a perfectly fine creature feature. I love mer-monster flicks like THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP. But while those films had a murderous monster, there was at least a little bit of a hook that made us understand a bit about the creature, its motivations, and why it does what it does. MONSTER ISLAND, as exciting as it was, lacked that oomph that would make it great. As is, it’s a good creature feature and worth checking out. But it could have been so much more if this script spent a little more time in the ol’ cooker.