Crew
Director/Screenplay – Marc Gottlieb, Producer – David Michael Latt, Photography – Michael Su, Music – Eduardo Daniel Victoria, Visual Effects Supervisor – Glenn Campbell, Production Design – Katie Flaherty. Production Company – The Asylum.
Cast
Anna Telfer (Sloane Foster), Tom Arnold (General Hamilton), Lisa Lee (Laura Miller), Jack Pearson (Joel Adler), Corbin Timbrook (Dr Pierce Nelson), Xander Bailey (Arnott), Iris Svis (Pavla Oalk), Eugenia Kuzmina (Zara), Lindsay Marie Wilson (Blanka), Sady Diallo (Florien), Jeffrey Rector (General Dean)
Plot
Abraham the giant ape has been relocated on a reserve in Nebraska where Sloane Foster works trying to communicate with him. The military want to take control of Abraham but Sloane protests against this. At the same time, a team of rogue Russian hackers activate a Mecha-Ape and send it on a rampage across Chicago. Sloane manages to board the Mecha-Ape and tries to take control of it, not before it picks up a nuclear warhead. The military decide the only way to defeat the Mecha-Ape is by pitting Abraham against it.
The Asylum is a low-budget production company that has been active since the early 2000s where they have put out a prolific output of films, ranging from their Mockbusters – films made with titles that resemble high-profile theatrical releases – along with a body of disaster and monster movies, in particular killer shark films with their ongoing Mega Shark and Multi-Headed Shark series and the B-movie hit of Sharknado (2013) and sequels.
Ape vs Monster (2021) was an Asylum mockbuster put together to take advantage of the release of Godzilla vs Kong (2021). The Asylum had started the whole monster vs monster film fad off with Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (2009) to which they had made assorted other sequels pitting the Mega Shark against other monsters, including a robotic copy of itself in the third entry Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark (2014), borrowing the essential idea of the robotic copy of the protagonist from the Godzilla series. In the same enterprising spirit, they made two Ape vs Monster sequels with this, followed by the subsequent Ape x Mecha Ape: New World Order (2024).
Ape vs Mecha Ape comes with a great opening set in a fictional East European country as an ape appears and soldiers shoot at it, blasting its skin off and revealing the mecha ape robot beneath. Throughout there are some generally okay giant creature effects – the digital effects of Abraham have notedly improved since the first film. It all reaches a passable climax. Tom Arnold plays a US general where he seems to now have inherited the roles that the late Tom Sizemore played for The Asylum.
The Asylum never seem too concerned whether a work stands on the line of believability or not. Here we get some rather precious straight-faced lines such as “We have taken every precaution to prevent separation anxiety in a giant ape.” The main problem with Ape vs Mecha Ape is it is not too convincing in creating its monster team-off. There is no clear reason why Mecha Ape emerges in an East European country and we then just cut to it emerging out of the ocean and going amok in Chicago. You suppose it has something to do with the team of East European hackers sequestered in a motel room, but it is not clear what they are trying to achieve.
Marc Gottlieb was a screenwriter at The Asylum, having written scripts for Planet of the Sharks (2016), Alien Convergence (2017), Triassic World (2018), Aquarium of the Dead (2019), In the Drift (2020), Jungle Run (2021), Super Volcano (2022), Time Pirates (2022), Top Gunner: Danger Zone (2022), 20.0 Megaquake (2022), 2025 Armageddon (2022), Ice Storm (2023), Megalodon: The Frenzy (2023), Snow White and the Seven Samurai (2023), War of the Worlds: Extinction (2024), The Anacondas (2025) and Master of the Universe (2026). He made his directorial debut with Ape vs Mecha Ape and followed this with Ape x Mecha Ape: New World Order, Witch Hunter (2024) and The Last Hail M.A.R.Y. (2026).
Trailer here