MAN-THING - REVIEW


"Man Thing"...

What WAS I thinking?

Here I was picking up a Marvel-approved comic-book monster movie directed by Brett Leonard (Lawnmower Man) expecting something a bit like Swamp Thing: kitsch, stupid fun. Perhaps even an underrated, gory action flick?

If you haven't guessed yet, I was wrong.

Talk about a waste of time... 

If you call a movie Man Thing and make it all about some giant swamp creature, I would suggest perhaps showing the character? Because otherwise what you're left with is bad actors playing bland secondary characters going back and forth to some swamp faking you out every time, making you think you're going to see something when in fact you're not. You're just not. I mean, I have no problem with big build-ups but this is hardly The Third Man: this sucks. So when you do finally see Man Thing, 10 minutes from the end, why would you even care? The ending of the film should have happened within the first 20 minutes! This is just filler filled with filler wrapped inside a golden turd of a DVD cover.

Why Marvel approved this is beyond me...

Man Thing tries to be a horror film when really it should have gone for something much more out-there, much more unique and interesting. Like... a real film? I think what annoys me the most about this one, despite the absence of its main character, is how stupidly repetitive and redundant it is. The entire film is spent telling us that there's something in some swamp and it kills people, something which we get about 3 minutes in. You almost feel like they were slowly building the monster during the movie, in the background, with leftover pieces of wood and CGI. Oh there are some ok make-up effects here and there but when that's the best thing you can say about a movie, you know you're in for some shit.

There's really not much to say about this one. There's an extended Brett Leonard cameo so you can shake your fist at him and when you do finally see Man Thing he is simply not worth it. Oh sure he's tall, has tentacles up his ass, a tree beard and red eyes but after an hour and 10 minutes, anything would have been a disappointment. Ok... maybe RoboCop showing up might have saved the movie but that's it.


Whether you're a fan of the Man Thing comic-books, a fan of B movies or a fan of so-bad-they're-good movies, this is one you'll definitely want to avoid. Swamp Thing exists, go see that.


No Thing to see here.

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