Snow Monster
release year: 2019
genre: giant monster mayhem
viewing setting: home streaming 4/17/23
synopsis: After an Arctic exploratory mission is lost, a rescue team heads out to find them.
impressions: This movie had another title ("Snow Beast vs Ice Shark") which could be misleading; while some ice sharks DO appear, they aren't major players in the big scale of things. This is another giant monster movie from China (see also Land Shark) and it's set in the year 2045 for some reason. This one has terrible choices for the dubbed American voices - it had to be intentional. In addition to some sort of giant yeti monster, there were also some Indiana Jones type antics, with a dash of Journey to the Center of the Earth thrown in too. Other noteworthy things: what appears to be a giant planet in the background at one point...the aforementioned ice sharks, which may have shared some CGI DNA with the land sharks from the other movie...a weird village in the middle of the frozen wastes, whose people have pointed ears...some martial-arts type fighting...a warrior-woman...the absurdity of people with guns trying to capture a snow beast that's hundreds of feet tall...soldiers whose names are numbers...a military attack...very futuristic weaponry for a guy who's seeking to make money that he obviously already has...the comedic relief largely being un-funny.
acting: Juncheng Wu is the main hero, a sort of young and acrobatic Indiana Jones. Yongxian Zhang is his ex-girlfriend who disappears in the icy wilds. Tang Zin is the comic relief friend, who usually just wasn't that funny. Guijun Jiang is the martial-arts-using leader of the mercenaries. Ruoxi Li is a young warrior woman from the isolated village. The various actors conveyed their lines well with body language, no matter what they actually originally said in Chinese.
final word: Fairly well-made giant monster action/drama.
back to the main review page