Rating: C-
Dir: Zheng Wenzheng
Star: Sammy Sum, Cao Yixue, Tao Jingyi, Ricky Chan
This opens with a giant lizard and snake, doing battle with each other on a bridge, before pulling the “48 hours earlier” trick. We then see meteorites crashing into the Chinese wilderness, and hey presto, an oversized lizard is quickly rampaging around the jungle. Oh, and occasionally turning invisible, because the director is clearly a big fan of Predator. Nearby are zoologist Zhao Xiaoye (Cao), an investigator from the Geo-Ecological Organization, and local guide Hu Tianming (Sum), whose brother Hu Tianzhao (Chan) is the head of nearby Badu Village. This place has been compromised by poisonous effluent from a factory run by malicious capitalist Wu Dechang. His idea of waste disposal is dumping barrels of sludge in the jungle, and that’s what caused the lizard of unusual size.
This increase is not without problems, and it turns out that eating fragments of meteorite helps soothe the resulting pain felt by the lizard. By the time this is worked out, however, Zhao and her team have led the creature back to Badu. After it has rampaged its way through the town, the survivors take refuge in Wu’s factory, and try to figure put how to deal with it. Which eventually takes us back onto the bridge, with the giant snake being another creation of the toxic waste, kept locked up by Wu because… I guess it’s what evil industrialists do? Let’s hope Elon Musk doesn’t get any ideas from watching this. Though needless to say, he who sets the snake, gets the snake.
The film runs only 75 minutes, but feels considerably longer. While the mayhem is reasonably well-handled, there are really only three chunks of it. This leaves a good deal of time to be taken up by other stuff that is not very interesting, such as the fraught relationship between the Hu brothers. It also feels like there’s no consistency in regard to the size of the lizard. One moment it’s the size of an ice-cream truck, the next it’s climbing in through a bathroom window to eat some showering Oriental totty (top). Did like its super-long tongue though. To repurpose a George Carlin line about flamethrowers, “I want to eat those people over there, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.”
Its effects are no great shakes, with a number of times looking clumsily pasted on top of footage of the humans, which is already green-screened to obvious effect. The script could use some more work too, with it often unclear which are the effects of the toxic waste, and which are due to the conveniently-located fragments of meteorite, like the one in the shower. Mind you, the print I was watching on YouTube did keep losing both audio and subtitles, especially in the later stages, so maybe it’s me. Oh, and keep an eye out for the Larry David looking mo-fo, playing a Western scientist.
This review is part of our feature, When Chinese Animals Attack. Thanks to Movies and Mania for the heads-up on this one.