Giant monster movies count as horror movies, right? Well, I have reviewed Cloverfield, and movies like King Kong are considered horror, so... Really though, I'm just looking for a good excuse to review Rampage, and since this is my movie review site/blog, I can theoretically choose to review whatever I want on it (but I'm still going to stick to horror, even films with thin justifications for their designation as "horror"). So let's look at a considerably lighter fare than some of my other recent movies have been.
After a space station explodes due to an (illegal) genetical manipulation experiment gone wrong, three canisters of gas based on CRISPR research to rewrite genes throughout a body crash to Earth in three places in the USA. Each canister is discovered by a nearby animal - a wolf, a crocodile and an albino gorilla called George who lives at the San Diego Wildlife Preserve - who are quickly affected by the gas and begin to grow and mutate. The mutation process also makes the subjects more violent, and they soon start to attack anything around them. To add to that, Energyne, the company who created the gas, want to capture the creatures to study them, so that they can weaponise the process. They use a frequency to lure the creatures to them, which also makes them even more aggressive. While the Army mobilises to try to stop the three giant creatures however they can, primatologist Davis Okoye, who rescued George when he was a baby and who considers George his friend, works with a geneticist who used to work for Energyne until she discovered their true intentions to try to find a cure for the genetic mutations and administer it to George before it's too late...
Rampage is based on a 1986 arcade game of the same name, which had even less plot than this movie - it was basically, "You are one of three monsters. Go destroy stuff and eat people." When you think of most movies that are video game adaptations (Silent Hill, the Resident Evil series, a large section of the works of Uwe Boll...) one tends not to have too favourable an opinion of them - but Rampage isn't all that bad. It's not spectacular by any means, but it's not bad. This is primarily due to the fact that it's a very fun movie - since it's hardly a film that's going to focus on a tense atmosphere or character development, it focuses instead on explosions and giant monsters climbing a skyscraper. A giant flying wolf. A giant crocodile that appears to have mutated the features of several dinosaurs (because crocodiles are essentially dinosaurs, of course). And a gorilla who knows sign language and makes terrible jokes. Rampage promises these things and delivers them, exactly as promised.
The other big selling point of Rampage that can't be overlooked is the casting of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as the lead. Now The Rock is actually quite a good actor as well as being one of the best-known professional wrestlers of the last 20 or so years, but here his role is mainly to be big and tough and recognisable for the poster and trailers, which he does very well. His character is hardly deep, but it doesn't need to be, because characterization takes a back seat in movies like this - and yet he's still relatable. His relationship with George feels good, with the two of them making jokes at each other's expense in nearly every conversation they have together (and there's another thing - a CGI movie primate not being played by Andy Serkis). Jeffrey Dean Morgan also has a role in the film as a government agent with a bit of a cowboy fixation (and a drawl to match), and he's good enough but a little overshadowed by having to support The Rock.
You don't have to look far for plot holes and most of the characters only just make it to 2D status in terms of being rounded-out, but as the film doesn't rely on a detailed plot or fleshed-out characters they don't really matter. Rampage is an example of what a good video game movie can be, as well as what action/sci-fi "horror" movies can be when you're not just relying on explosions and dodgy racial caricatures (looking straight at you, Transformers series), and while it's unlikely to win many awards, it's enjoyable enough and a good way to spend a couple of hours.
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