Bullet Points: The Lake (2022)
Foreign Film Friday was among my favorite features from the early days of Bulletproof Action. It’s too bad that I couldn’t keep up with it since there are so many quality action flicks from around the world to cover. I’m not sure I would ever run out of content and especially since there have been such massive advancements in parts of the world that hadn’t been at the forefront of cinema. Thailand has flexed it muscles in the action genre for years, but I can’t remember being this excited for a creature flick no matter its country of origin.
Synopsis: A girl finds a strange egg and brings it back to her village, only to later realize it was from a monster. Now a giant monster emerges from the lake to search for the egg, destroying the town and its inhabitants.
- The Legend: We’re in Thailand and introduced to a family that lives in a small village next to a lake. Seems like a pretty normal family to me; Dad works hard, the children help to raise the grandkids, and there’s a drunk uncle that is wasting his life away. It all changes when Dad doesn’t come home one dad and upon looking for him they realize that a massive creature has come out of the local lake and is messing shit up.
- Chill, May: There always seems to be a kid in each of these monster movies who gets far too curious and makes life more difficult for everyone around them. Enter May. She finds a beach ball-sized egg near the lake and decides to carry it away. Big mistake.
- The cavalry has arrived: Of course the authorities show up when things go bad and among them is a Police Inspector who might seem very familiar to you. You know the type. He’s got a broken home and a child who gets far too little attention. Their relationship is strained and he’s battling trying to make ends meet while keeping his sanity. Basically your garden variety burned out cop. He is running around chasing this massive monster as it lays waste across the countryside.
- Family Drama: Drunk Uncle and young May are among the survivors from the original confrontation with the creature. He was bitten by what seems to be a baby version of the monster and slowly starts to develop some sort of connection with the beast that I’m sure will prove useful. For him, though, it proves problematic as he also seems to feel the pain from the beast and it has a few dozen pissed-off people with pitchforks jabbing it.
- Creatures: Where the movie really rocks is in the creature work. The look of the beast is cool and familiar while still feeling like something that hasn’t totally been seen before. To be honest, it seems like that lake might have been a little too small to hold this massive monster but WHO THE HELL CARES?! We don’t get a lot of scenes of the monster killing folks as it’s mostly left for off screen deaths or dudes just getting rag-dolled through the air. It’s a shame since the team that did these effects probably could’ve made something special.
- Save the children: If you’re looking for a movie that really misses Jurassic Park than this might be the flick for you. There is a scene with the Inspector’s young daughter and May in a car while the monster plods toward them. It was actually pretty cool to see. The addition of the kids in this movie brings it down for me. The family drama is played up pretty hard by the end and everyone, including the authorities, do next to nothing to actually stop this massive creature.
The Verdict: The Lake doesn’t spend much time around the lake but it does spend a lot of time with close up shots of a fish-like creature. It’s pretty cool, too. Most of the close shots are some great practical stuff while the far away shots are purely CGI and they show. The creature, and its spawn, build up a body count early on in the film but then it turns into a heavy drama with all sorts of relationship issues and questions as to whether or not they should be killing it. Movies like this always feel a bit strange since I live in The United States and I fully believe that creature would have been shot to bits by gun owners well before it ever messed up that town but it certainly makes for better drama when there is only one gun in the entire film. Speaking of the film, I love a good creature flick and this one wasn’t bad. I didn’t really connect with any of the characters and the story didn’t have much to it but the creature looked cool and it never felt like it dragged. Check it out if you’re a creature flick fan, like myself. Good to see some fun Thai stuff out there.