Sea Beast aka ‘Troglodyte’ (2008) – It gets better!

I didn’t expect an awful lot from a film entitled ‘Sea Beast,’ but I do confess to enjoying a good monster-munching B-movie and I thought this one might fit the bill.  However, at about the twenty minute mark I was seriously considering turning it off – I know it’s hardly a ‘mega budget’ blockbuster type film, but I thought the special effects might be a little better than when you first see the titular creatures.  In short… have you seen a Playstation ONE cut scene?  If so, then that’s kind of what the beast looked like.

However, I persevered and, believe it or not, I was glad I did.  Either my eyes got used to just how badly designed/animated the monsters were, or the film-makers used the worst take on the initial sighting of the antagonists, as the creatures seemed to look a little less CGI-ed onto the film.

No, ‘Sea Beast’ still wasn’t an Oscar-worthy affair.  You won’t really recall any of the cast once the credits have rolled.  I can’t even remember any of their names.  They’re there purely to die – and die they promptly do.  You’ll probably guess at least a handful of those who are destined to survive, but that’s not to say their characters are ever defined any deeper than ‘the guy with long hair’ or ‘the main girl.’

Perhaps what makes the monsters a little better is that the film-makes use the tried and tested trick (that they’ve obviously gleamed from the ever awesome ‘Predator’) of making the monsters sort of invisible, which cuts down the need for special effects.  In fact, there is some dialogue here and there that does sort of sound like it was almost copied and pasted from Arnie’s jungle outing against a certain head-hunting alien.

Ultimately, ‘Sea Beast’ is what I had thought it would be – an hour and a half of utter trash, purely designed to fill a small gap in my life where I had nothing better to watch and fancied something that I didn’t have to think about.  It’s no masterpiece and there are a million better movies (did I mention the 1987 film ‘Predator?’) but this one is watchable enough to only make me want to check my phone every few minutes during its runtime.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that