BEHEMOTH

STARRING: Ed Quinn, Pascale Hutton, Cindy Busby, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Ty Olsson, William B. Davis

2011, 90 Minutes, Directed by: David Hogan

Behemoth promises to be the mother of all creature features with a dormant creature the size of a volcano about to awake and unleash apocalypse upon humankind for being right royal jerks and allowing something like George Lucas tampering with the Star Wars movies for their Blu-ray release to happen.

However the movie is all buildup and no payoff.

The said CGI creature only makes an appearance right at the end of movie just to have its head blown off unceremoniously by our bazooka-wielding hero. (This doesn’t count as a spoiler as it is shown in the trailer.) Yup, Behemoth’s “action” finale is even more anti-climactic than the Obama presidency! Couldn’t the creature at least have stomped one city before being destroyed? Maybe Ontario? Is that so much to ask?

Instead, most of Behemoth is all is all foreboding and dark premonition with X-Files’ Cigarette-Smoking Man (William B. Davis) babbling on like the crazy street person you try to avoid on your way to work each morning about nature wanting to wipe out humanity. Some OTT choral music no doubt cribbed from Jerry Goldsmith’s score for The Omen doesn’t help either and is more likely to illicit giggles instead of anything else.

Ultimately Behemoth is a creature feature without a creature. Its template seems to be one of those ‘Nineties disaster flicks about volcanoes about to erupt. The abrupt ending seems to be a case of the film-makers running out of cash. “Ah heck,” one can imagine the producers saying. “Let’s just have Ed blow the thing up as it soon as it rears its butt ugly head.” As always, the apocalypse turns out to be a damp squid – quite literally in this case.

However, when it comes to the low expectation world of movies bearing the dreaded “Syfy Original Movie” moniker, then Behemoth at least feels and looks like a proper movie instead of, let’s say, Asylum efforts such as The Almighty Thor or Battle of Los Angeles, all of which feel like something those kids in Super 8 would have made over their summer holiday break.

Behemoth has okay production values (special effects, photography, outdoor locations, etc.) – for TV. The screenplay is a cut and paste affair alas. Former Eureka star Ed Quinn gets to say “let’s get out of here” at least three or four times during movie as if the screenwriter decided to use this – probably the most overused phrase in movies along with “you don’t have to do this” – whenever she couldn’t think of anything else for Quinn’s character to say.

Watch Trailer / Clip: