Needless to say that I had never actually heard about this 2022 Chinese movie titled "Longling Insect Valley" prior to sitting down to watch it here in 2023. And with the recent years flood of creature feature movies with questionable CGI coming out of the Chinese cinema, I must admit that I wasn't exactly harboring much of any grand expectations to director Zhang Jiahao's 2022 movie.
The storyline in "Longling Insect Valley" was actually adeuqate, Sure, it was a very generic monstrous creature feature storyline and approach to making such a movie, but it still proved to be watchable for what it turned out to be. Just don't expect director Zhang Jiahao to reinvent the genre here, as everything in the movie is straightforward and has been seen and done before.
The acting performances in the movie were fair enough. I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but the actors and actresses put on adequate performances with the generic material they had to work with.
Now, with "Longling Insect Valley" being a creature feature, with monstrous spiders and scorpions, then having realistic, believable and good CGI rendered creatures is a make or break deal. The CGI used in "Longling Insect Valley" was somewhat of a mixed bag of nuts. The concept and the intention was good, but the creatures were painfully obviously just CGI rendered, and sometimes looked rather out of place. The CGI was lacking proper interaction with the live cast, and it took away from the overall credibility of the movie.
If you enjoy creature features, then "Longling Insect Valley" is an okay movie for a single viewing. But that is also just about it, because you're not in for a grand cinematic experience. Nor is it a movie that warrants more than just a single viewing.
My rating of "Longling Insect Valley" lands on a mediocre five out of ten stars.
The storyline in "Longling Insect Valley" was actually adeuqate, Sure, it was a very generic monstrous creature feature storyline and approach to making such a movie, but it still proved to be watchable for what it turned out to be. Just don't expect director Zhang Jiahao to reinvent the genre here, as everything in the movie is straightforward and has been seen and done before.
The acting performances in the movie were fair enough. I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but the actors and actresses put on adequate performances with the generic material they had to work with.
Now, with "Longling Insect Valley" being a creature feature, with monstrous spiders and scorpions, then having realistic, believable and good CGI rendered creatures is a make or break deal. The CGI used in "Longling Insect Valley" was somewhat of a mixed bag of nuts. The concept and the intention was good, but the creatures were painfully obviously just CGI rendered, and sometimes looked rather out of place. The CGI was lacking proper interaction with the live cast, and it took away from the overall credibility of the movie.
If you enjoy creature features, then "Longling Insect Valley" is an okay movie for a single viewing. But that is also just about it, because you're not in for a grand cinematic experience. Nor is it a movie that warrants more than just a single viewing.
My rating of "Longling Insect Valley" lands on a mediocre five out of ten stars.