Review: MONSTER FORCE ZERO Was a Let Down

Monster Force Zero is a movie releasing through Wild Eye Releasing on October 13 and after watching the trailer, I was pumped. I really love watching a great bad movie and the trailer was very promising. The film is directed by Nathan Letteer and stars Adam Singer, Aeon Cruz, Dalena Nguyen, and Pat Tanaka. I’m sorry to say that after all the hype, the film did not deliver. There are spoilers ahead, but believe me, it’s no big loss.

I’m going to start by talking about what I liked about the film. The music fit well. The concept is amazing. I love the idea of cosplayers being granted the powers of their heroes. The basic plot of cosplayers helping one alien race that then turns out to be the bad guys is always a fun twist. Finally, the T-Rex really is the best part. If you merely watch the roughly 10-15 minutes where the heroes are stuffing the T-Rex into the back of a car (yes, you read that right), you don’t really need to watch any other part.

Now for the pitfalls. While the music fit well, it often overpowered any lines being said making it really hard to understand what was going on. The sound engineer needed a bit more time it seems to get the mix right. Another criticism comes down to many of the actors. While the characters themselves weren’t amazing (more on that in a bit), the acting felt very one dimensional and half-hearted.

The biggest problem really was the writing though. The writing of the script and the writing of the characters were problematic. The characters never felt complete in any way. The main characters are A.I. (Singer), Ammorama (Cruz), Kadabra Couture (Nguyen), Yetiboot, and The Janitor (Tanaka). The Janitor is the most fleshed out character with his story being that the aliens helped his wife and are keeping her hostage until he helps them. The first three are working together in some way to bring about their new comic Monster Force Zero at a comic convention. A.I. is the writer, Ammorama is the artist, and KC made their costumes. We later learn that A.I. and KC have a thing for each other and KC likes to pop pills for depression or anxiety or something. It was a little unclear. Ammorama’s big trait is that she is a bad mamma jamma. That’s all that we get for the characters. We don’t even really learn what their powers are. This allows them to conveniently give the characters any powers as needed. Something that would’ve been really nice is a scene of the three creators talking about the comic and the characters. Maybe instead of watching A.I. just walk the convention floor at the beginning. Also, partway through, there’s talk of teamwork, but the only teamwork we see from Monster Force Zero is when they get the T-Rex in the car.

Also, Monster Force Zero ends up competing for the honor of helping these aliens with another cosplay group called the Destroyers of Destruction. It’s never explained if they’re a group costume as well from some franchise called DoD or if that’s just their cosplay group name or what.

Oh, I didn’t forget about Yetiboot. He just randomly shows up at the place so that he can join the team so they have enough people. He never talks, is pretty ineffective at doing pretty much anything, and most annoyingly of all, he takes his mask off at the end and we don’t get to see who it is. That’s annoying.

Oh, and I haven’t even got to the script or lack thereof. One of the things that doesn’t help the characters is how little the protagonists actually interact with each other. Most of the lines are directed at antagonists or are the alien race explaining the mission that you can’t hear too well because of the music (thankfully, Garrett Wang re-explains everything with less music). They rarely talk to each other. Plus, the pacing for the film has us jumping from scene to scene to scene giving the audience no time to get their bearings. They’re so busy trying to have a bad script that they don’t even let the characters provide any exposition. We don’t know if Monster Force Zero are friends, how long they’ve known each other, or anything. It feels like they’ve known each other for about a day even though they’ve been on the convention circuit for a couple of months.

There are good bad movies and there are just bad movies. Sadly, Monster Force Zero both tried too hard and too little to be the former. I had very high hopes for the film, and was disappointed with the end result.