At first glance, Kong: Skull Island is a mediocre crash grab for Warner Brothers. But in actuality, it’s more than that – sort of. Never before have I gone into a theater and come out thinking, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. While that may not be saying much, the film itself has some decent action, okay character development, and a script that passes with a mid-stopping thumbs up.

The action sequences in Kong: Skull Island are all started by a jump scare. I’m not kidding. I jumped in my seat until it stopped surprising me and I could tell when it was coming in those three seconds of utter silence. Once the ‘scare’ happens, the film quickly shows its similarities with Toho’s legendary Godzilla franchise.

The action is fast-paced, thematic, and well done. It’s the one thing the film has going for it, and for that, I commend it. It is, after all, a monster movie. Unfortunately, Warner Bros. decided to plan the action sequences first and think about the plot later, meaning the script suffers badly.

Another thing that seemed apparent were the moments when things would “jump out of the screen” during an action sequence. Kong: Skull Island felt like it was trying to be a 3D cash grab.

Kong’s script is awful, it’s the worst part of the movie. For probably the first 45 minutes or so, I had no idea who anyone was until it was restated multiple times by the characters.

The truth is that this movie should have been a book. The many characters don’t have very much time to be given development (except for one guy but I’ll get to him later), so the majority are just killed off by monsters.

Fortunately, once the film hit the hour and a half minute mark, I found myself liking it more and more. The characters began to take shape, and there was depth to what they were doing. The objective of this plot is simple: escape the island. That’s it.

This isn’t Citizen Kane or anything, nor should it be, I came to see giant monsters punch each other. However,  the good thing is that unlike the 2014 Godzilla reboot movie, the plot tied the characters to the monsters, so there was death. It wasn’t too much monster focus or too much human focus; it hit somewhere in between.

The best part of this movie was one man: John C. Reilly’s character as a forgotten World War II veteran that crash landed on the island. He is hands down the only thing that kept me going when all else (cinematography, acting, etc.) went south.

Reilly is probably the only character in this film that has some decent development. Unlike Samuel L. Jackson who played Samuel L. Jackson.

As a whole, Kong: Skull Island is not a very great movie, it was sub-par. The cinematography was that of a 3D movie that tried to be 2D at the same time, the character development and script was awful, and the action sequences – were decent.

Please, if you’re the kind of person that goes to see a movie only every few months or so, then don’t go and see this, there’s so many better options. However, if you’re a fan of those old Godzilla movies, or monster films, you might get a kick out of this. Kong: Skull Island is a cash grab… with a bit of care put into it.