The Tank Review

The Tank review.

The Tank knows all the steps. It knows what a movie of its kind is supposed to look like. Unfortunately, aside from some excellent creature effects, it doesn’t know how to make any of it fun.

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The Tank

Directed by Scott Walker

Written by Scott Walker

Starring Luciane Buchanan, Mark Mitchinson, Matt Whelan and Ascia Maybury

The Tank Review

There are some incredible creature designs in The Tank.  The kind of quality that catches you off guard.  Nothing else about the movie comes close to matching how good the creature effects are.  That’s not to say that anything in The Tank is awful…or even bad enough to (pun intended) tank the movie.  It’s just that the creature effects are top of the line incredible. 

Creatures aside, the best way to describe The Tank is competent.  It knows what it’s supposed to do and does exactly that.  Beat for beat.  No surprises.  More importantly…no excitement.  The Tank is often a boring movie.  When those excellent creature effects finally show up…you’ll be forgiven for feeling frustrated that they weren’t unleashed sooner.

To be clear…boring doesn’t mean bad.  It means boring.  Everything The Tank does is technically right.  The acting is good…there just isn’t much going on.  The early portions of the movie build interest and tension well enough.  The climax is okay even if it ends rather abruptly.  The Tank just feels so…by the numbers.  A by the numbers story with excellent creature design and effects.  Unfortunately, it hides that excellence for too long to save the overall package.

The plot of The Tank revolves around family secrets and unleashing a monster.  Ben (Matt Whelan) inherits some land that he didn’t know his mother owned.  He takes his wife Jules (Luciane Buchanan) and daughter Reia (Zara Nausbaum) to the gorgeous locale to discover what he’s inherited.   The long dormant property is tied to family secrets that, along with literal monsters, are unleashed by the family.

It’s all a fine set-up for a movie.  This one just never gets out of first gear.  At least, that is, until we get those incredible creature effects.  I’m going to continue to push how good the creature work is in The Tank in part because it is the one truly excellent aspect of the film…and in part because it really deserves your attention. 

Everything else feels like people trying to make something out of nothing.  Luciane Buchanan is given the role of character who sees something and tries to warn everyone to varying degrees of success.  She’s as good as she can be with a movie that avoids interesting conflict at every turn.  She’s very good, in fact…and deserved a better story to show off her talents.

The biggest issue in The Tank is its familiarity.  Almost all horror is heavily borrowing from genre tropes…they just usually add something new to it, show it from a different perspective, or give a twist on expectations.  The Tank doesn’t do any of that.  It passes on humor or commentary or action or…well…anything.  The mysteries revealed aren’t that interesting.  Even the character introduced that you know is going to meet their fate at the hands of a creature disappoints in both how long it takes to unfold…and the fun happening in the most predictable way possible.  The Tank gives you something you’ve seen before, done slower.

It also gives you some of the best creature effects in recent memory.  If you happen across The Tank on TV one night…or it finds its way to a streaming service that you subscribe to…I recommend watching it.  At least fast forward to the third act and check out the great work that Weta Workshops put into a movie that didn’t meet its high standards.  A movie that didn’t even try.

Scare Value

The Tank is a watchable movie that never exceeds “pretty good”. Top notch creature effects remain hidden for too long. By the time we get to watch them at play…it’s too late. Everything here is competent…but it never becomes more than the sum of its capable parts. You could do worse…but they could have done better.

2/5

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The Tank Trailer

If you enjoyed this review of The Tank, check out Critters 2: The Main Course or Bride of the Killer Pinata