Fans largely know what to expect when a giant monster movie rolls around, with the countless titles featuring skyscraper-sized creatures, mutated beasts, and hulking variations of everyday species having been a popular genre for decades.
It’s pretty difficult to put a fresh spin on such a well-worn and essentially one-note premise, then, which makes What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? every bit as interesting as it is disappointing.
We’ve all been conditioned to expect the same standard beats from an epic monster mash; two adversaries do battle and leave cities reduced to little more than smoldering rubble, with the victor left standing tall after causing untold collateral damage, and wreaking catastrophic havoc. However, the genius concept behind writer and director Satoshi Miki’s effort is as inspired as it is simple. How do everyday people deal with a monstrous carcass rotting in the middle of their everyday suburban lives?
The story finds one of the titular monstrosities laying waste to a city in Japan, but when it dies, the public face a crisis of an altogether different sort. The corpse is beginning to decompose, and there’s a gas buildup forming inside that threatens to blow up the body and lay waste to everything in the vicinity, which forces a special forces team into action in an effort to try and thwart the impending disaster.
What to Do With the Dead Kaiju? is nothing if not unique, but reviews were middling to say the least, with almost all of them lamenting the fact the phenomenal concept wasn’t utilized to its fullest potential. Either way, on-demand customers haven’t been deterred, with the one-of-a-kind monster mash having become one of the 20 most-watched titles on Amazon heading into the weekend, as per FlixPatrol.
Published: Jul 7, 2022 11:02 am