The Crawling Beast of Prey (2025)

Unapologetic gore horror with a weak script.

“Omukade” is a film that plunges viewers into a relentless and intense thrill ride, filled with graphic violence and in a claustrophobic setting. The plot takes place inside a mine cave, where the dark and cramped space skillfully creates the atmosphere of dread and exhaustion. This backdrop is the ideal setting for the film's main source of terror: a giant, man-eating centipede based on Japanese folklore. The creature itself is regarded as unsettling, designed to provoke maximum discomfort and fear in the audience, especially if you have entomophobia (fear of insects) or chilopodophobia (fear of centipede).

While the movie excels in creating a tense and disturbing ambiance, it falls short in other critical areas, particularly in storytelling and character development. The script offers minimal depth or growth for its characters, making them feel pretty flat and one-dimensional. While the ensemble cast brings their best performance to the table, the characters' relationships and backstories are heavily sidelined to make room for the next monster attack. The lack of character complexity makes it challenging for me to form a connections or invest emotionally in their fates. Plus, the theme related to war gets lost in the shuffle, overshadowed by the focus on gore and suspense and diminishing the film's overall coherence. Another issue with this film is its cinematography. While the CGI is considered solid and ambitious for a Thai monster film, the erratic, shaky camera movements during action sequences left me feeling dizzy.

Overall, "Omukade" stands out as a chilling, nightmarish horror film that masterfully uses its eerie mine setting and the unsettling creature to create fear. In my opinion, it's a fresh twist on the typical Thai horror style. It suits the taste of fans of extreme creature features and unapologetic gore. But if you are looking for a character-driven story with a deep plot, Omukade isn't the ideal pick.

Lire la suite

The poster promises more than the script delivers.

I'm not the biggest fan of mixing horror with war. The war is scary enough. People kill other people skillfully enough, we don't need monster added to that mix. It only works when it's strictly soldiers focused - so then it becomes more of an action horror. If civilians are added in the mix, it ain't it. Especially when the the war set up is too grand for the weak script.

They tried to make it a cohesive story for the Japanese being the invaders on Thai territory like the main characters were invading the monsters lair, but that created a contradiction that was not explored at all in the script - how the monster that represented the attacked Thai people was the bad guy in that specific situation, and how war and attacks are often more complex if we talk about specific people on the group compared to few people who make the decisions.

So yes, the set up was solid, the plot overall was weak. The moment they end up in the cave, there is no story at all. Which overall is not a bard thing in horror movies - some we just watch to witness fun monster fighting people. But if you give me an emotional war set up, you gotta follow with something stronger.

Initially I was not crazy about the monster's design, but later they presented some fun ideas like it animating dead body by eating through them. Gross, but effective. Especially since the deformations in the bodies were different.

The acting was fine. No really outstanding performances. I liked the special effects - I feel like often in these movies they struggles to match the lighting of the CGI monster with the light in the background so it stands out too much, looking fake. They did a good job with it here.

Overall, decent watch, but not one I would be recommending to people.

I'm curious how the Japanese and Thai people feel about this movie :)

Lire la suite