Movie · 2017 · Action, Adventure, Fantasy · 1h 58m · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 2.8/10 (941.6K ratings)
All hail the king.
Overview
Explore the mysterious and dangerous home of the king of the apes as a team of explorers ventures deep inside the treacherous, primordial island.
Ratings
Curator score: 2.8/10
IMDb: 6.7/10
Letterboxd: 3.11/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 75%
Metacritic: 62
TMDB: 6.6/10
Director
Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Production
Legendary Pictures, Tencent Pictures
Cast
Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Jing Tian, Toby Kebbell, John Ortiz, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Thomas Mann, Terry Notary, John C. Reilly, Marc Evan Jackson, Eugene Cordero, MIYAVI, Will Brittain, Richard Jenkins, Allyn Rachel, Robert Taylor
Curator Review
Verdict
A loud, swaggering monster adventure that mostly succeeds as spectacle and creature-feature fun, even if the human drama is thin and the tonal shifts are all over the place. If you want big-budget chaos, striking visuals, and a movie that knows exactly when to let Kong steal the show, it delivers.
Best for
monster-movie fans
viewers who want big CGI spectacle
people who enjoy pulpy military-adventure action
fans of stylized, comic-book-like blockbuster energy
Skip if
you need strong character writing
you dislike tonal whiplash
you want a serious or grounded adventure
you are tired of franchise setup and sequel bait
Overview
Kong: Skull Island is a loud, aggressively entertaining creature feature that treats spectacle as the main event. The film’s best asset is its sense of scale: helicopters, napalm, jungle ruins, and giant monsters are staged with a comic-book confidence that keeps the movie moving even when the script does not.
Worth noting
The human characters are mostly sketches, but the cast sells the pulp with enough attitude to make the expedition feel like a ragtag war movie dropped into a fantasy nightmare. The post-Vietnam setting gives the film a distinctive visual identity, and the monster designs are often the real reason to stay locked in.
Bottom line
It is messy, tonally uneven, and sometimes too eager to be cool for its own good. But if you want a blockbuster that embraces absurdity, delivers creature mayhem, and never pretends to be more serious than it is, this is an easy watch.
Top Letterboxd reviews
#1 gizmo fan (4★) · 5628 likes
I relate to king kong because I too would protect brie larson at all costs
ava adore (4★) · 3802 likes
Tom Hiddleston, wearing a gas mask, runs through poison gas while slicing little pterodactyls with a Japanese samurai sword.
matt lynch (2.5★) · 1757 likes
Objectively not very exciting but what is pretty interesting is the total cartoon Vietnam stuff. I've never seen that conflict aestheticized in quite this way before, a total pastiche of images concerning a time period now old enough to feel like a fantasy for a young geek-demo filmmaker. It's like the 80's nostalgia thing but applied to this incredibly destructive piece of history. So weird.
Adam (4★) · 1426 likes
"Is that a monkey?"
Sam Jackson actually says "Bitch PLEASE" to Brie and I fucking CHOKED.
pd187 (4★) · 1302 likes
The Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this hemisphere? Localized entirely within Skull Island?