My quick rating – 2.4/10. After a blogger’s monster video goes viral, he vanishes into the wilderness, leaving behind only his shaky handi-cam legacy. Naturally, two amateur mythbusters decide to investigate and prove that “The Hollowed One” is just another online hoax. Unfortunately for us, that also means enduring their acting for the next hour of Monster Tapes.
We kick things off with some of the most aggressively high-school-looking performances I’ve seen this year. The first few minutes feel like an improv exercise gone rogue, complete with the kind of dialogue that makes you wonder if the script was printed on napkins. Our fearless debunkers are camping in a tent roughly the size of a laundry hamper, and somehow emerge the next morning with perfect hair and clean clothes. Sure, Jan.
One girl even dons a Rambo-style bandana, ready to face evil — or maybe just mosquitoes. Before long, soldiers appear out of nowhere, supposedly there to hunt the monster (and possibly the girls, because why not?). Toss in some random hunters for good measure, and suddenly we’re knee-deep in a chaotic forest free-for-all. By the time the monster actually attacks, it’s like everyone forgot which movie they were in.
And yet… I have to give a little credit where it’s due. The editing during the attack scenes is oddly creative — chaotic, yes, but interesting. The monster fight choreography looks like a lost TikTok dance trend, but at least it’s trying. The director, Ashley Hays Wright, seems to have a spark of visual ambition buried somewhere beneath all the confusion. The use of miniatures mixed with CGI hints that someone on this crew actually cared.
At just 61 minutes, Monster Tapes doesn’t overstay its welcome — though it does test your patience. It’s one of those rare cases where the film is bad on nearly every level, but you can still sense a tiny glimmer of potential trying to claw its way out of the carnage. If Wright ever wrangles the madness into something coherent, we might get a decent B-movie someday.
For now, Monster Tapes is an endearingly awful, unintentionally funny monster mash that is definitely circling the coop of the #turkey pile.
