NOW ON VOD! In director Steven Shea’s animated sci-fi comedy Isla Monstro, a long-forgotten government island is crawling with the leftovers of a failed 1980s DARPA super-soldier program. So why not turn it into a vacation destination?
Duke the Daunting (James Schrader) is not exactly what you’d call a success story. He’s a professional screw-up currently posing as a cruise ship magician. Worse, Duke is in deep with a Miami drug lord, counting down the days until he pays back what he owes. He’s got one week. Before he can even think of a plan, he falls overboard and washes up on the shore of a top-secret government island that, officially, doesn’t exist.
As he regains consciousness, he is greeted by Sam (Harland Williams), a slug-like creature who is just as surprised to find a normal human on the island. Sam explains the backstory: Fort Montana was a 1980s DARPA program designed to turn volunteers into genetically enhanced super soldiers to help win the second Cold War. Deemed a failure, the program actually produced a whole island full of mutants.
Sam brings Duke to Diana (Juliana Harkavy), whose job is to verify that any new arrival is a genuine human and not another experiment gone sideways. There’s Reggie (James Marsters), a sea creature who spends his days diving for pirate gold. There’s Moon, a jellyfish-goth-shark hybrid. And then there’s Dr. Oculus (Maurice LaMarche), the island’s only remaining scientist — who happens to be a giant floating eyeball. The island community is strange, but it works for this crazy cast of characters stranded here for who knows how long.
“Fort Montana was a 1980s DARPA program designed to turn volunteers into genetically enhanced super soldiers to help win the second Cold War.”
When Reggie surfaces with a haul of treasure, Duke gets a bright idea. Inspired by his parents, Duke convinces everyone to turn Fort Montana into a first-class resort and calls it Isla Monstro. The island quickly becomes a viral hit on social media. Unfortunately, this garners the attention of the mobster looking for Duke and, worse, the government, which was just about to nuke the island to cover up their secret once and for all.
I’m a huge fan of comedies, but I’ll be honest: as far as indie comedies go, most of them miss the mark. They lean on the weird, the loud, or the gross without giving the audience anything to actually care about. With Isla Monstro, I expected more of the same: silly monsters and a dopey main character. What I got instead was a hilarious, surprisingly well-thought-out story about a goofball and a group of misfits trying to build a world-class resort while dodging the mob and the United States government. It works because there is a solid yet silly story running throughout the film.
This foundation is laid with origin stories. Every creature on the island was once a person who volunteered to become something more — a super soldier, a defender of the free world — and ended up abandoned by the same government that turned them into the monsters that they are. Writers Steven Shea and James Schrader know exactly what to do with each individual creature and backstory. They build from there, pushing every character right to the edge of logic and decency. The voice cast is one to brag about, with notables like Harland Williams, James Marsters, and Barry Bostwick, along with a cast of veteran and emerging voice talent.
The animation itself is fairly simple — off-the-shelf software, probably something like Adobe Animate. The movements are goofy, and I mean that as a compliment. The backgrounds and character designs are a joy to watch come alive without ever distracting from the story being told. There’s also a sex scene right in the middle of this film that is downright hilarious. I love comedies, and Isla Monstro gets a strong recommendation.
Isla Monstro is proof that you don’t need a big studio behind you to make a genuinely funny, thoughtfully built animated film. Director Steven Shea has put together an oddball comedy that earns every laugh.
For screening information, visit the Isla Monstro official website.
"…So why not turn it into a vacation destination?"
