Rent Monster Armageddon (2022)

Three Stars out of Five for Asylum - that's Oscar form that is.... - Monster Armageddon review by Strovey

Firstly, this is an Asylum film so you know what you are going to get, some okay acting, some really poor acting, some okayish screen effects and created by a new user to Photoshop. All done with an underlying sense of humour and a bit of cheek.

Here though the film is set in the world of Asylum, so they are a film maker in the story and it is their films that cause the disaster. Asylum milk this well, especially early on and to completely frank it is funny. Particularly later in the film where we meet ‘actor’ played by Mike Gaglio, sort of playing himself, in a film, it is rather funny as so meta your head might start spinning.

The effects are absolutely spot-on Asylum effects, you can see where they give the creators a budget limit but the intent is there.

Credit where credit is due, despite the absolute lack of any care for any details of US military operations, ranks or how it all works, and clearly limited locations, the one thing that Asylum do is unashamedly have women in leading and important roles. In Monster Armageddon it is the unlikely-looking Maddy and Quinn played by the delightful Lindsey Marie Wilson and Jhey Castles both attractive and sparky ladies but at no point did I think they were sisters. Nevertheless, Asylum unashamedly put them front and centre as the heroes and also sort of did it in a way that says, ‘this is completely normal’. No fanfare or highlighting, two ladies, in the lead, saving the day, let us get on with it. Fair play to them.

Not only that but the people who bring how the ‘aliens’ are operating to the authorities' attention are also a woman, and a brown man, who are happily married.

As mentioned before the acting varies from scene to scene with probably the worst being in an obvious cost-saving scene as the main protagonists escape from the marauding ‘crocosaurus’ they comment on what they can see as they look out of the helicopter window. Except all of them seem to be watching a Sunday picnic or seem as emotionally affected in that way. Michael Pare probably the most experienced actor in the film is the worst, he is looking at a 200-foot-long crocodile destroying Washington DC with literally no emotion on his face.

The story wobbles all over the place and like many Asylum films seems to have changed at the last minute, cutting scenes or dialogue out that then makes things a bit incomprehensible but if you are in the right mood, that is the fun of it.

We get everything, from giant robots, snakes, sharks and so on, but we also get potato-headed aliens and zombies, the cleanest looking unscary zombies ever to have risen from the dead but they are there.

Overall, Monster Armageddon or 2025 Armageddon as it appears to be called now is everything bad about Asylum, cheap, silly, nonsensical and rushed and everything good, cheap, silly, nonsensical and too rushed. But the winner for the company is the premise. Base everything on your films, promote them in the film, take the mickey and even cause an alien invasion. That has never happened to MGM.

If you cannot stand any Asylum film and I admit I am not a big fan and have never been, you might be able to bear this effort. If you love watching their style of silly rip-off fun then you will love this.

You pays your money and takes your choice.