Reviews
‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ Review – Latest Monster Mashup Goes Bigger and Sillier
The heavyweight championship event that was Godzilla vs. Kong ended in a tenuous truce that saw Godzilla holding dominion over Earth while King Kong claimed Hollow Earth. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire introduces a new Titan-sized threat from the depths of Hollow Earth, one so dangerous that Kong and his human allies will need all the help they can get to defeat it. Director Adam Wingard continues the kaiju spectacle with the latest Legendary Monsterverse crossover event, this time injecting an even greater sense of adventure and silliness. It’s the type of epic-sized popcorn movie that unleashes nonstop monster brawls and tongue-in-cheek humor in equal measure.
Since the events of Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla spends his downtime curling up for naptime in Rome’s Colosseum when not snuffing out rogue Titans that emerge. The kaiju king’s activity is closely monitored by Monarch and Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall). Dr. Andrews also keeps a close eye on Kong through stations established around Hollow Earth access points, and poor Kong is lonely as he still searches for others like him. Then there’s Dr. Andrews’ adoptive daughter Jia (Kaylee Hottle), the sole survivor of the decimated Iwi tribe from Skull Island. Jia’s struggles to find her place in school and society at large get exacerbated by strange new visions that seem directly tied to Hollow Earth.
Dr. Andrews enlists Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry) to help her navigate Jia’s new plight. Once the new threat makes itself known, all three, along with wisecracking kaiju vet Trapper (Dan Stevens), descend into Hollow Earth for answers. Instead, they find a terrifying new battle heating up for kaiju sovereignty.
The Monsterverse franchise often struggles with its human characters and how they fit into the kaiju mayhem, but screenwriters Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, and Jeremy Slater may have finally cleared this hurdle by trimming down the human cast and keeping it simple. Jia’s heritage creates an emotional conflict between her and her adoptive mother that injects a sweet earnestness, while Brian Tyree Henry’s Bernie brings levity. Then there’s the scene-chewing Dan Stevens, whose Trapper gets introduced in style as he performs a tooth extraction from an aircraft with infectious exuberance. Stevens plays the character with the bravado of an ’80s action star but one that’s fully aware of himself and the absurdity of his unique gig. Trapper’s boisterous personality goes far in demonstrating to audiences just how much we’re meant to be having fun and not take everything seriously, so much so that Godzilla x Kong could stand to see more of him.
Of course, the real stars are the monsters, and this, once again, is Kong’s show. Godzilla remains the undisputed heavyweight champion, but it’s Kong’s pursuit of finding his place in Hollow Earth that drives Godzilla x Kong. The required exposition delivery as Wingard corrals the converging plotlines into an action-heavy final act does slow the momentum in the first two-thirds, despite frequent action set pieces. But the main event delivers the promised team-up and then some, thanks to at least one pivotal surprise up Wingard’s sleeves that brings the wow factor to the final battle. That key surprise is pivotal, not just for fan service, but to offset how underwhelming the new enemy is, a generic mirrored inverse of Kong and his frenemy.
Wingard and crew seem fully aware of that and play up the cartoonish quality of the premise to maximize the fun factor. While it does indeed evoke the intended sense of fun, especially when Kong flings a smaller ape around as a weapon or dons a power glove, there’s a weightlessness to the whole thing. There’s no real impact to any of it, even though it often looks cool.
It all amounts to a visually polished Saturday morning cartoon filled with monster brawls and the humans who love them. Beyond the charming entertainment, though, Godzilla x Kong is more hollow than Hollow Earth.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire roars into theaters and IMAX on March 29, 2024.
There’s something really insidious, in a great way, about setting a horror story in a movie theater. It’s something filmmakers have known for decades, going back to The Blob and beyond, but it never fails to strike a chord because, in a way, it hits us exactly where we feel safest. Seeing a horror movie on the big screen, surrounded by like-minded moviegoers, is a communal experience, one in which everyone screams and laughs together. We are together, and therefore we are much less vulnerable, so when someone punctures that bubble of safety, it’s all the more frightening.
Matinee (also released as Midnight Matinee in some territories) is a movie that understands this from the jump, setting up a stunning opening kill that predates a similar sequence in Scream 2 by almost a full decade. A smart, layered, very stylish Canadian slasher released at the tail end of the 1980s, it’s one of those films that’s spent a lot of time in the dark even among the horror faithful (I’m willing to admit that I hadn’t seen it until recently). Now, a new Kino Cult Blu-ray release is out to change that, and it reveals a slasher essential that, while not perfect, has charm and style to spare.
Two years ago, the Paramount Theater in the small town of Halston closed its doors when, during the theater’s annual horror festival, a young moviegoer was murdered in his seat, mid-movie. Leads in the murder quickly dried up, and the case is cold enough now that the town barely talks about it anymore. Fortunately for local horror fans, that means the Paramount can open again in time for its Halloween horror festival, and they’ve got a hotshot producer (William B. Davis) in town for just such an occasion.
As the festival draws closer, the film introduces us to a variety of characters, including rebellious teenager Sherri (Beatrice Boepple), her boyfriend Lawrence (Jeff Schultz), her overbearing mother Marilyn (Gillian Barber), and the theater’s kindly owner, Earle (Don S. Davis), who’s just hoping he can run a business without more bloodshed. But someone clearly remembers what happened two years ago, and their violent streak is on a collision course with opening night.
Matinee has quite a few things going for it, but what stands out right away, and maintains a consistent grip right up through a wonderful crescendo in the third act, is the film’s visual style. Writer/Director Richard Martin, cinematographer Cyrus Block, and special effects wizard Bob Comer make great use of the film’s limited locations, giving the movie a charming small-town feel reminiscent of Halloween or The Blob while building a self-contained little world inside the theater itself that’ll remind you of films like Popcorn and Demons.
The colors are striking, the framing is clever, and the film clearly has a ball making references to all kinds of other horror cinema moments ranging from The Phantom of the Opera to Friday the 13th. The kills, while relatively sparing with gore, are delivered with style and appropriate tension, creating that sense of unease right in the middle of a place where we as movie fans should be comfortable: The movie theater. Along the way, the Paramount itself becomes a character, and this release definitely dials up its retro splendor.
The Blu-ray upgrade preserves the film’s attention to detail and ambitious cinematography, helping the colors to pop while never letting go of the texture and feel of a relatively low-budget horror film made in Canada in the 1980s. There’s a certain gauziness to many exploitation films of this era, that haloed light you get when the scene is perhaps overexposed just a little too much. It makes the film dreamlike even when it reaches for realism, and Kino Cult’s upgrade preserves that feeling. Throw in a smart script and a whodunit plot that leans heavily into the psychological details of each character, and you’ve got a winner.
There are a couple of things that stick out as slight issues here, including the lack of special features beyond an excellent commentary from film historians and Kino regulars Jason Pichonsky and Paul Corupe. The disc is quite reasonably priced, so it’s not a letdown economically speaking, but I’d love a deeper dive into the film and the Canadian slasher boom in general, particularly for a movie like this that seems to have faded from so many memories, including mine. The sound mix also has some issues, probably left over from previous releases, that might have you playing with your volume settings a little more than you’d like over the course of a 90-minute film, particularly when lines of ADR dialogue crop up.
These are minor concerns, though, and they do nothing to diminish the impact of Matinee, or the joy that’ll come from watching this film for the first time if you’re a slasher devotee in search of something new, or even someone who saw this movie way back when hoping to relive its glories. This is one of those slashers I’ll be talking about with fellow horrorphiles for a long time, and it’s because of this disc.
Matinee is now available on Blu-ray from Kino Cult.
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