Desert Monster (2022)

Low budget monster flick

Desert Monster was a low budget, very low budget, monster flick set during the Republican Era. Presumably so that they could use a few modern amenities, minus telephones, while also wielding knives and bows.

Meng Xi and Xia Xuan are the only survivors of their team sent into a research lab in the desert. Their mission was to bring back the “original virus solution to neutralize a bacterial infection.” The lab had messed around too much with nature and ended up creating a vicious monster from desert lizards. Monsters that could breed like rabbits and hunted by sound and smell. Meng Xi and a wounded Xia Xuan escape to a small village where they accidentally set off a barrage of arrow slinging booby traps. The people who built them live underground and bring the two below to safety. Numerous villagers are suffering from a virus spread by the desert monsters. The only way to create an antidote is to breach the monsters’ lair and capture the queen.

Meng Xi is one of the typical heroes from these cheap films. He can do anything and nothing bothers him. He dodged a hundred arrows Matrix style without getting a scratch. Villagers might die to accomplish the mission? Sometimes you have to crack a few eggs to save the world. He asked scintillating questions such as, “I wonder why they live underground?” Maybe because there were a thousand of those vicious man-eating monsters above ground? The ones you were running from. Ying, the lead warrior and archer from the village, was a typical poorly written female character. Brave? Yes. She was also emotionally unstable. Every few minutes she cried that it was all her fault. What was? Everything. When someone died, she fell down, pounded the ground, and wailed. Even when there was a monster breathing over her shoulder. “Back off, I’m trying to emote here!” Fallen characters were given touching flashback scenes. Why? They might have had ten minutes of screen time, not sufficient time to bond with the character. There was the requisite rousing speech by the village elder and enough noble sacrifice to fill a fleet.

I was generous with my score because despite the many, many drawbacks, including the hocus pocus science, the film did try to carve out a space for itself in the crowded cheap monster movie genre. It just needed better writing, acting, and AI critters. Not the worst low-budget creature feature I’ve watched, but that’s not saying much. Only if you need to kill a little over an hour and enjoy bargain basement monster movies.

21 October 2026

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