5 Movies Like Godzilla Every Monster Movie Fan Needs To See
Are you jonesing for more action after seeing Godzilla vs. Kong? Or maybe you've just acquainted yourself with the Big G for the very first time and you're looking for monster movies with a similar tone and flavor as the original movie?
Well, today's your lucky day, because we have listed a whole treasure trove of monster movies — some obscure, some every single kaiju fan should know — to keep you entertained as spring turns to summer.
Whether they spotlight the further adventures of Godzilla's friends or foes or they explore the horrors within, or whether they speak to us of the communal power inherent in punching big monsters or warn us of the potential horrors of nuclear war, each movie will thrill, entertain, and please you just as much as the original Godzilla did. From the silly to the scary to the jaw-dropping, we're listing them down in this article.
Mothra
If you're looking to dig into the sometimes cheesy — yet always entertaining world — of the Toho Studios Godzilla universe, you can't go wrong with 1961's Mothra. Often portrayed within the Toho universe as the gentler, universe-healing flipside to Godzilla's more cheerfully destructive ways, the colorful, gigantic moth's debut picture features her in a much less magnanimous mood.
When a group of explorers on a scientific expedition breach the sanctum of the recently-irradiated Infant Island, they find two humanoid 12-inch-high twins (Yumi and Emi Ito) whose prodigious singing talents make them of particular interest to the party. Clark Nelson (Jerry Ito), an entrepreneur on the expedition, kidnaps them at gunpoint and puts them on a Tokyo stage, marketing them as tiny fairies.
The twins soon become a sensation, but neither woman is thrilled with spending their time in a strange man's captivity, locked up in a cage between songs. They begin to beg Mothra to intercede. The tribe they were kidnapped from are soon seen singing and begging a giant egg to hatch, and the egg begins to crack. Cue a kaiju versus human battle to return the tiny twins to Infant Island.
Mothra is both cheesy good fun and, in its own way, it makes a statement about the influence of American capitalism on postwar Japan. If you want to try it out for yourself, it's available on Vudu for $2.99, and you can even pair it with a Rifftrax "Just the Jokes" audio commentary.
Tremors
The 1990 film Tremors comes more from the big-giant-rubbery-things-are-attacking-the-city school of monster flicks than the original Godzilla, but it does the job in a jiffy, leaving the audience delighted and screaming in rapid succession. It's got giant monsters and an armed-for-bear Michael Gross — what more can you ask for?
Handymen Val McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward) think their trip to remote Perfection, Nevada, will be as dry and dull as the desert community that surrounds them. Unfortunately, they stumble on something far more sinister on their way to nearby Bixby — giant, ravenous wormlike creatures called Graboids. Val and Earl's day trip soon transforms itself into a fight for survival between themselves and the citizens of Perfection and the creatures that want to swallow them whole.
Cheesy but eminently memorable, Tremors has since spawned a sprawling franchise that includes seven direct-to-DVD sequels and an attempted spin-off series, which lasted only half a season on SyFy in 2003.
Attack the Block
It gave John Boyega his mainstream breakthrough role, and it's become one of the most popular cult monster pictures in recent memory. Attack the Block is a strong-bodied, nervy, and beautifully shot movie — at turns funny, frightening, and dazzlingly smart with its social commentary.
The 2011 film follows a group of five kids — Dennis (Franz Drameh), Pest (Alex Esmail), Biggz (Simon Howard), Jerome (Leeon Jones), and Moses (Boyega) — as they attempt to survive the night and protect their apartment building against a sudden alien invasion. Included on the journey is trainee nurse Samantha Adams (Jodie Whittaker), who becomes the group's ally in spite of a rocky start.
The way the movie successfully captures its feeling of time and place is startling. This was Joe Cornish's first big-screen directorial effort, and the result is a surprising work of art that reflects Godzilla's sense of community banding together versus an outside force.
There have long been rumors of an Attack the Block sequel, but nothing has yet come to fruition.
Big Man Japan
We've talked about man versus giant monster, man versus outside force, and man versus giant worm – what about giant man versus kaiju?
In the very strange 2007 mockumentary Big Man Japan, Hitoshi Matsumoto portrays Masaru Daisatō, a man who has the inherited ability to grow in height in response to his proximity to high voltage wires. Daisatō, under the moniker Big Man Japan, uses his abilities and formidable strength to defend Japan against giant monsters. Unfortunately, he feels like a failure in both his personal life and his ability to stand tall beside his forebearers. It takes help from his fellow kaiju hunters for him to save the day.
Big Man Japan is an incredibly odd movie, but you're likely never going to see anything else like it in your lifetime. For that alone, it's worth tracking the movie down and giving it a watch.
Pacific Rim
Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim is the next step in monster films. Combining the heart-grabbing populist sensibility of the Toho-era Godzilla films and the rock-'em-sock-'em action sensibilities of the Tokusatsu genre, it has deservedly become one of the bigger cult successes in the past ten years.
The 2013 movie focuses on a pod of survivors of a massive kaiju attack who work as Jaeger operators for the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. The Jaeger pilots operate giant robots via The Drift, or a telepathic mental link, and use the robots to defeat the giant Kaiju coming to Earth via The Breach — a rift that exits at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) is still reeling from the death of his brother when his commanding officer, Marshal Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) recruits him for a mission. Pentecost pairs Becket with Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), Pentecost's adopted daughter and a rookie he's reluctant to send into the field.
Becket and Mori spar and train at the Shatterdome, preparing for the day of the mission. But will it be too late?
Del Toro has as much fun as humanly possible with this concept, and his dizzying film is a delight that will please newbie kaiju fans and anyone looking for a Godzilla-like blend of human drama and monster-based action.
The movie was followed by Pacific Rim: Uprising, which drew mixed reviews, and a Netflix animated series, Pacific Rim: The Black.