Competent Telling of the Bog Standard Sea Monster Movie

juliankennedy23

Troglodyte (Sea Beast): 7 out of 10: A mysterious sea creature threatens a small fishing village and one boat captain along with a visiting biologist are trying to find a solution before it is too late for mankind.

The Good: Three cheers for competence. Troglodyte is a by the numbers monster movie with so many tropes, so neatly presented like clockwork, that one could turn this into a deadly drinking game if one were so inclined.

Let's give it a try. Sea captain hero worried about bills and about to lose the boat, sea captain's daughter who is secretly dating a townie against her father's wishes, sexy marine biologist to provide both love interest and expository dialog, rich man in town antagonist who doesn't believe in the sea monster, town drunk who is a former fisherman who saw a monster eat his crew and no-one believed him, the monsters are only children and here comes mama, nest of eggs located conveniently located next to something very flammable. I could go on but you may be drunk already.

But you know what. It works. There is plenty of fodder and the action scenes are well thought out. While the story and plot is a like a well-worn sweater, there is nothing wrong with some good old fashioned comfort food every once in a while.

The Bad: Where should you put your worst CGI that looks like it escaped from a PlayStation 2? How about an opening scene where you have unnecessary establishing shots of a CGI boat with a puppet captain that looks like something Thomas The Tank Engine would befriend. I wonder how many people understandably turned this off after five minutes with that nonsense on the screen.

The Ugly: You know for such a trope-filled sea monster movie they seemed to skip the skinny dipping bather or the teenagers making out tropes. For a movie where they inserted a decent amount of gore, it seems awfully chaste. I don't think the hero captain even gets a kiss at the end from the Marine biologist love interest.

In Conclusion: A very competent telling of the bog standard sea monster movie.

score 7/10

juliankennedy23 24 December 2018

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4531266/