‘Monster Island’ Review: A Must-See Creature Feature [Overlook Film Festival 2025]
Monster Island (originally titled Orang Ikan) is a creature feature wrapped in the historical context of World War II. The film follows a Japanese soldier and a British prisoner of war who end up stranded on a desolate island, only to find there is a bigger enemy than each other lurking in the shadows. It’s easy to see the influence of The Creature From The Black Lagoon, but there’s also sprinkles of Predator, Overlord, and Sweetheart. Orang Ikan, which translates to “fish people”, also has a heavy dose of kicking and punching, which is on brand for director Mike Wiluan, who’s produced films like Monkey Man and The Night Comes For Us. Fans of hand-to-hand combat, war movies, and creature features are in for a pleasant surprise.
Monster Island starts strong by throwing us into the middle of a hellish Japanese ship transporting prisoners of war. A bit of on-screen text quickly provides context on these ships, and then the film thrusts the audience into the dark side of war. My eyes took in a ship surrounded by dark, turbulent water as the groans and cries of prisoners echoed throughout the theater. The camera glides over the squalor and disease, giving us a glimpse of the prisoners in their deteriorating physical state. It felt like a haunted house, but all of the ghosts were alive and suffering.
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Then the camera shifts focus to prisoner Saito (Dean Fujioka). He’s covered in lacerations, but his uniform is the same as the soldiers’ who pull him from his cell. We learn that he is considered a traitor, and he will be executed once the ship returns to their homeland. He is chained to a British soldier, Bronson (Callum Woodhouse), to teach him who the “real” enemy is. But before the lesson gets started, the ship is attacked. This is where the film turns into a full-on war movie. It reminded me of the beginning of Overlord. Planes begin swarming the ship, and the camera turns frantic, moving with the chaos of the scene. We switch back from combat scenes to explosions to bullets flying. The scene is punctuated which a large explosion and the sinking of the ship. This all happens within the first 15 minutes.
Once the smoke settles, the two soldiers wash ashore, still chained together. As they regain consciousness, they start to fight until they realize they are not alone. I love how the creature is introduced early (in glimpses) to set the tension. Although we do not see the creature in its full glory until in the film, we see it’s vicious enough to make the soldiers drop their arms against each other and work together. They eventually free themselves from their shackles (like Mary Mary) and as the sun sets, more soldiers wash up on the beach. It’s like a dinner bell for our creature and it creeps up from the trees.
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This time we get a heavy dose of what the creature can do. It rips off limbs, tears heads from bodies, and snatches out hearts. Hre, Wiluan truly establishes how high the stakes are. While Bronson and Saito injure the creature, they end up rolling down a hill like it was Scream 3 and get separated. This is where the editing and pacing slow the flow of Monster Island. Too much time is spent cutting back and forth between Saito, Bronson, and the creature. It’s disorienting, which could have been intentional, but never comes across one way or the other. If you look closely enough, you can piece together that the three are at least getting closer to each other.
While the men are separated, we learn even more about the Orang Ikan, played by Alan Maxson, who is no stranger to playing creature roles (he’s done motion capture for films such as Godzilla: King of the Monsters and played the stork monster in V/H/S/Beyond). The monster comes out day or night. It can swim, run, and jump. But most importantly, it’s intelligent. It knows how be stealthy, checking its surroundings and considering possibilities. It can even heal itself, with a scene where the creature is shown using a type of medicine for a wound (a monster in STEM). This isn’t just a beast—this is something even more terrifying.
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Once Saito and Bronson reunite, they plan to take a final stand against the monster. Here arises a problem: Bronson is hell-bent on destroying the enemy while Saito is more hesitant to destroy the creature. This tracks because in the beginning of Monster Island, Saito considered harming himself instead of Bronson. Meanwhile, Bronson would have killed Saito if he had the chance. When we learn why Saito imprisoned, it sheds light on how war changed him. In Bronson’s case, war warped his mind to not see the humanity in his enemy. He even calls Saito and his countrymen “monsters”, which is incredibly ironic considering Britain and its past. Bronson transfers those feelings to the creature once it becomes the real threat, removing the enemy title from Saito. War turns humans into monsters in the eyes of the enemy.
That through line sticks, which is why I love how the showdown plays out. I truly enjoyed this creature feature despite a few gripes, like Bronson’s excessive talking and him yelling “bitch” quite a few times—it was starting to give Freddy Krueger. Some of the editing, especially when they’re out in the wilderness, slows down the pacing and undoes that tension. We could have used fewer scenes with the monster just roaring into the open with no one around. The flashbacks at the end were excessive, and the very last shot is a trope I dislike, but regardless, thanks to plenty of action and monster mayhem, I WILL be back for seconds.
Monster Island played as part of the 2025 Overlook Film Festival.
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Monster Island
Summary
Fans of hand-to-hand combat, war movies, and creature features are in for a pleasant surprise with ‘Monster Island’.
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