Crew
Director – Jared Cohn, Screenplay – Geoff Meed, Producer – David Michael Latt, Photography – Josh Maas, Music – Christopher Cano & Chris Ridenhour, Visual Effects Supervisor – Glenn Campbell, Production Design – Anthony Pearce. Production Company – The Asylum.
Cast
Steve Richard Harris (Dr J.P. (James Patrick) Roth), Jenna Enns (Dr. Andrea Horowitz), Xavi Israel (Russo), Terry Woodberry (General Worthington), Paul Logan (Lee), Samm Wiechec (Badger), Lindsay Elston (Bugs), Michael Marcel (Hammer), Richard Leacock (Terry Andrus), Liz Fenning (Karen), Teagan Sirset (Samantha), Vinnie Duyck (Greene)
Plot
With the emergence of more of the monsters off the Atlantic coast, Dr J.P. Roth, the creator of the giant mechanised Armadas, is called in by the military. Three new Armada pilots are sent in to tackle the monsters as they emerge onto land but end up being defeated. Roth has difficulty because his original designs for the Armadas have been replaced by a new operating system. He struggles to get the Armadas back into action as hordes of alien spiders emerge from the carcass of one of the monsters.
The Asylum has become a prolific low-budget production company since the mid-2000s. They produce a mountain of disaster and monster movies. The two niches they are most associated with is the gonzo killer shark film, having created the bad movie hit of Sharknado (2013), along with assorted sequels and other works in a similar vein. The other is their production of Mockbusters – films that come out with titles intended to mimic those of big-budget releases in the hope that people will mistake them or not look too closely.
When Guillermo Del Toro made Pacific Rim (2013), his big-budget Transformers vs Giant Japanese Monsters film, The Asylum simply switched US seaboards and delivered their own low-budget mockbuster version with Atlantic Rim (2013), released four days before Del Toro’s film. And when Pacific Rim came out with a sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), The Asylum responded by making a sequel too with Atlantic Rim: Resurrection, released six days before its big-budget counterpart.
The period between 2013 and 2018 was the point when The Asylum’s in-house visual effects department underwent a quantum leap in improvement of quality – from the shoddy cut-price CGI of their earlier films to some of their more recent output that could easily compete with work being produced by major studios. Atlantic Rim sat right at the point when things were just starting to improve. Similarly, Atlantic Rim: Resurrection came out in the middle of this transition – some of the early scenes with the emergence of the monsters harken back to that same cut-price look that affected the original. Certainly, things improve during the sequence in the middle of the film with the Armadas up against a monster where the effects quality is noticeably better.
On the other hand, Atlantic Rim: Resurrection lacks much as a sequel except more of the same. You want to see giant Mecha bashing up kaiju but the middle of the film gets far less interestingly overrun with street battles between soldiers and not exactly giant but oversized spiders. The plotting is fairly standard for fairly much any Asylum film – a monstrous threat appears, the only recourse is a radical or discredited scientist and an untested theory that they are required to implement as they go into the fray.
Atlantic Rim: Resurrection is also shot cut price with only a couple of sets and a couple more street locations. One of the pluses of the film is scientist hero Steve Richard Harris who comes with rugged good leading man looks and certainty.
Director Jared Cohn first appeared for The Asylum with Born Bad (2011) and has become a prolific director for them with the likes of Bikini Spring Break (2012), Hold Your Breath (2012), 12/12/12 (2012), Jailbait (2014), Bound (2015), Evil Nanny (2016), Little Dead Rotting Hood (2016), King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (2017), Alien Predator (2018), Shark Season (2020), Super Volcano (2022), 20.0 Megaquake (2022) and Ice Storm (2023), while going out on his own with Underground Lizard People (2011), Buddy Hitchins (2015), Hulk Blood Tapes (2015), The Horde (2016), Death Pool (2017), The Domicile (2017), Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill (2017), Devil’s Revenge (2018) and Swim (2021).
Trailer here