The question that always comes up with action movies that have tons of special effects, karate fighting, huge monster-like creatures and explosions is – does there need to be a story? A beginning middle and end? We are spending so much money on special effects, why not just create the special effects and then try to make some kind of a story around those effects later. Too many bad movies are like this, with the screenplay and well organized story an afterthought, rather than the reason why the movie was created in the first place. For me, its always been intelligent story first, explosions and special effects second.

The new movie “Monster Hunter” is about a group of marines who are in a desert somewhere in the world, where they are suddenly trapped in a huge sand storm and then transported into a different dimension. There is no explanation as to why or how this happened, or why this other dimension even exists. Once the group of marines lead by Artemis, played by Milla Jovovich arrive in the new world, there is scene after scene of the marines being attacked and killed by huge lizard or spider-like monsters. Artemis then meets up with The Hunter, played by Tony Ja who does not speak English but does have outstanding karate fighting skills and what follows are at least 4 fighting scenes between the 2 of them, until eventually they become friends. They then team up to kill the biggest lizard monster, and them meet up with Admiral, played by Ron Perlman. This is the entire movie, marines transported to a new dimension, then fighting monsters, killing monsters and getting killed. There is absolutely no story here and really no movie, just an excuse for many special effects.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this bad movie is 48% – I give it 18% only for the special effects. This is not a movie, is just a series of action events and because of this, should be missed.