Blood Monkey (2007)

Expertly directed by gifted, BAFTA nominated veteran Robert Young and highlighted by an outstanding performance by Oscar winning actor Abraham, this is a film that deserves to be enjoyed by a wider audience. It features as well a supporting cast of exciting young faces who we're sure to see much more of in the future. The special effects are lackluster due to budget constraints but Young uses his time honored skills to bring the thrills to life in spite of that. Abraham gives a subtly stunning characterization and while watching him work his magic, it is readily realized by any viewer that this is a true artist at work. Every moment he is on screen is mesmerizing and it is obvious why this is someone with an Academy Award for best actor on his night stand. The location shooting in Thailand is fresh and put to superb use and the cinematography is breathtaking. Unfortunately, the script is a bit weak but the actors overcome this through their burgeoning talent. Certainly a film worth seeing in order to see two cinema masters such as Robert Young and F. Murray Abraham work together so beautifully.

Most creature features recently had the same problem: extensively showing creatures that look computer generated from a mile. In that respect, 'Blood Monkey' is much better, because it doesn't show the monkeys through 95 pct of the running time. Suspense is created successfully, because the characters only know something is lurking in the jungle, but they have no idea how dangerous it actually is. This is closer to the 1940s horror movie style than the current gore-in-your-face flicks which leave nothing to imagination. I also liked the location in Thailand, it provides a convincing background.On the other hand, the movie has serious flaws. To name a few: the video camera thing, one actor filming the others, which has been done to death in the past decade. Story logic - for example, why do they go hunting with only one huntress and one gun, I'd have armed myself to the teeth if I were in the professor's place? Briefly, there is some irrational behaviour to the point it's sometimes annoying, such as the students buying cheap excuses, and some of the young actors appear to be quite amateurish, anyway, but I realise it is a tough job for them to play next to an F M Abraham.To sum it up, the movie was not extraordinary, but at least better than I expected from the other reviews around here, and more interesting than various recently released shark, crocodile or piranha flicks. I voted 5/10.

The Robert Young the reviewer is talking about is the director. He's listed as Robert Young (III) in the database - not the Robert Young you're talking about in your post.It's an understandable mistake.This movie was standard fair and hardly worth watching.I have no real review to make of the film. It's not worth making a review of the movie or watching the movie even if it's a rainy day and you have nothing to do. There should be a way of responding to comments without typing a lot of 'filler', but I don't know what it is. Sorry for posting all this,but it won't accept my response to 'xminusone' without a lot of words.

Lets strike up the band people, another Sci-Fi Channel ho-hum movie. I rated it as a 4 as it wasn't the worst of the movies they've done nor was it their best. It had fair acting from F. Murray Abraham that plays the over the hill mad professor of Anthropology that has discovered an extremely brutal smart anthropoid. He leads a group of students that by appearances think they are going to "Safari Land," on a misguided search into the deep jungle to find the creatures with disastrous results. The premise and the storyline of the movie works for me as well any Horror/Sci-fi/Action flick. The problem is with the direction and acting of the actors that leave so much to be desired. The characters were very shallow and that is the director and writer's job to fill in the, "Why we are so dumb," story that makes sense. Otherwise we wind up with a movie like "Bloodmonkey," with so-called smart students doing the most gullible dumbest things and acting like high school morons with an IQ of 80. If Sci-Fi could figure out a simple premise that all students on digs, research or hunts are not shallow blithering morons, it would go a long way to making their movies a lot better.