Behemoth |
USA / Canada • 2011 • 90m •
   • Directed by: W.D. Hogan. • Starring: Ed Quinn, Pascale Hutton, Cindy Busby, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Ty Olsson, William B. Davis, Garry Chalk, James Kirk, Shaw Madson, Marsha Regis, Michael Adamthwaite, Nicolas Ouellette, John Hainsworth. • Music by: Michael Neilson.     In the small Ascension, the constructor Thomas Walsh is working with his team at the Mount Lincoln. Out of the blue, there are tremors and the branch of the tree fall over Thomas' employee and breaks his leg. He brings his truck and finds the man dead. He brings the man to the town and finds that his sister Grace Walsh plans to camp at the mountain with her sweetheart Jerrod Dietrich while their lunatic father William Walsh defends the theory that an ancient being is near to be released on Earth and destruct the planet. Meanwhile, the geologist Emily Allington returns to her hometown Ascension to investigate the tremors. The army representative Jack Murray also comes to Ascension to search a mysterious wallet that was lost on the mountain. Soon the dwellers of Ascension discover the secret of the tremors.
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Review:
Okay, this is what it's all about. Lurking under our feet is a giant (and I mean: GIANT, in a global sense of the word) mythical monster, that resides there for like millions of years, but at the start of the movie decides to pop up to punish the world-populace for it's faults (i.e. the systematic neglect of the environment and the killing of each other, etcetera). Is it god-sent? Or some demon? The movie never explains, apart from some fuzzy reference to old Indian tales. In fact some googling will learn you that the term Behemoth refers to a biblical land-creature (as opposed to Leviathan, the sea-creature), that's supposed to have the shape of a hippopotamus and served as an awesome proof of God's creational abilities (and didn't necessarily was a bad-assed monster). Well, one can understand that the idea of a giant monster-hippo even went too far for the makers of this movie, but why then still use the name Behemoth?
Anyway, here we are with Behemoth. It reveals itself at first by terrible earthquakes and tsunami's all over the world. So we are supposed to believe that it stretches it's body out under the entire surface of the earth. How unimaginably big should such a creature be? When it at last pops up in this little American town in the middle of nowhere (why didn't it choose a densely populated town like New York or London, to create at least some bigger havoc?), we see it: first a few tentacles with the width of say a sewer-pipe, then a staring eye as big as a round garden-trampoline, then at last the terrible monster itself, sitting on top of the burst-open mountain, and indeed it's big, like maybe some hundreds of feet high and tentacles that stretch for many miles around him. But GLOBALLY big?!? Is this big enough to cause earthquakes at the other side of the globe? Can this overblown octopus cause the destruction of all mankind and the whole wide world?? How? It just sits there glued to the mountain, flapping it's tentacles and roaring through it's wide opened jaws. Will it smash or swallow all the 7 billion people on earth one by one?? Roar them to death?? It's utterly unbelievable and plain silly. Okay, the CGI-picture of the beast is nice, with some Lovecraftian traits, but it never ever creates any sense of the supposed apocalyptic doom or terror.
In the meantime the terrible truth slowly dawns on everyone in the little village (especially the hero and heroine of the story, two scientists that used to date, broke up and now in the face of the apocalypse find each other again) and makes them run around in a frenzy, preferably TOWARDS the mountain in stead of away FROM the mountain. But rescue is near: a mysterious government-guy strolls through the woods on the mountain with a big box that contains the ultimate weapon to kill this beast. How come? How did the government know? Why didn't they evacuate the area or state beforehand? Why send just ONE man without any back-up and instruct him to be as mysteriously as possible, as to avoid that anyone else could timely be warned? We never hear any explanation. You would think the box contains some awesome sci-fi device. Instead it's some sort of pimped bazooka. With just one piece of ammunition. Why the hell would the government play cheap when the future of the whole world is at stake?! Couldn't they have put like 10 or a 100 bullets in the box, just to be safe?
Anyway: our local hero (in the meantime the governmental guy has passed-over the instructions with his dying breath) has only one chance to kill the beast and he decides that he has to shoot the beast in it's mouth. Everyone tries to give the impression that this is extremely hard to do, but the beast conveniently gives an over-long roar, keeping it's mouth wide open for ever, and since it never even ducks away (stuck to it's mountain-top as it seems to be), the bullet hits the target and the beast explodes. End of story.
In short: the world has faced it's total destruction but with the blow of just one simple bullet everything is back to normal. Thanks to our vigilant government. After seeing this movie I immediately slept better (or could it possibly have been from being bored too much?).
Review by johannes2000-1 from the Internet Movie Database.
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