In a strange world where humans co-exist with a wide variety of large and savage monsters, a Hunter, a warrior trained to hunt and kill these powerful creatures, is separated from his team when their ship is attacked by the Diablos, a horned subterranean monster.
On Earth, U.S. Army Ranger Captain Natalie Artemis and her United Nations security team search for a missing team of soldiers in the desert. A sudden storm pulls them into a portal to the hunter's world. There, they find the remains of the missing soldiers and their vehicles.
Artemis's team is soon stalked by the Diablos. The beast proves impervious to bullets and grenades, and kills two members of the squad.
The survivors of the Diablos's attack escape into a cavern network, but quickly discover this is no safe haven, as they are attacked by monstrously large spiders. Only Artemis survives, immolating dozens of the creatures as she makes her escape.
Soon after this, she encounters the Hunter. In a straight-out-of-comic-books plot development, the two promptly beat each other black and blue. Trust and respect somehow established by this violence, they then team up. Their objective: the Sky Tower, which may present a way for Artemis to return home.
Of course, between them and it lies the Diablos ...
Monster Hunter is the eighth feature film collaboration between director Paul W S Anderson and his real life spouse Milla Jovovich, and the seventh of those eight to be based on a video game. The sole exception was the 2011 steampunk interpretation of The Three Musketeers.
The other six were all Resident Evil films, and honestly, this is on the whole very much more of the same kind of movie as those earlier projects. This is not to say Monster Hunter is identical to the Resident Evil films. It focuses more on battles with single, very large CGI monsters than those movies tended to do. And Artemis feels considerably more vulnerable than Alice, Jovovich's RE character, ever did. But overall it's very reminiscent of those films. Especially the first of them, given that this movie shares the same "badass woman finds herself in a situation she doesn't understand, and ends up fighting monsters" plot outline.
Certainly, if you have seen the Resident Evil films, I think you can use your reaction to them as the basis of your likely enjoyment of this movie: they seem very much targeted at the same audiences. Which is to say, the Chinese market: China delivered over half of the worldwide box office for Resident Evil: the Final Chapter. Unfortunately for this film's financial outcomes, a poorly judged line of dialogue drew the ire of Chinese authorities. It consequently failed to recoup costs, and seems unlikely to launch a new action movie franchise.
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