Monster Force Zero Fun Fan Film

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Submitted by RJ Carter on Fri, 08/28/2020 - 22:59

One of the fun activities while attending comic and scifi conventions is heading off to one of the side rooms to watch fan films. These range from the basic no-budget stories shot on a smart phone while making it up as you go along, to large budget Star Trek stories with special effects and -- sometimes -- actors from the actual series. Mostly they're a mix, with a modest budget, inexperienced actors, and a simplistic plot. The goal overall is just to have fun watching them as well as making them.

MONSTER FORCE ZERO falls into that middle ground, right up to the appearance of STAR TREK: VOYAGER's Garret Wang! In fact, it's a film that's probably best enjoyed at a convention more than at home. However, to make up for that, it provides that convention feel by setting the bulk of this film within an authentic mid-size convention, with a group of teens doing their best to push their comic book through cosplaying their characters: A.I. (Adam Singer), Ammorama (Aeon Cruz) and Kadabra Couture (Dalena Nguyen). When they are challenged by another group of cosplayers to compete in a competition later that night at one of the after-parties, both teams find themselves embued with the powers of the characters they portray by a mysterious alien, Ann Unaki (Silvia Taziri) and her companion, Igigi (Sly Clayton), with the MF0 team receiving the approval of a mysterious Janitor (Pat Tanaka) who is full of tidbits of wisdom.

After the competition, which finds Monster Force Zero surprisingly triumphant over the domineering Destroyers of Destruction, the team finds themselves transported through space to an orbiting ship (that looks an awful lot like a basement office), where they are shown the enemy they are expected to defeat -- Dr. Iolanda Eeche (Rachel Darden), her consultant (Juston Cooper), and Squatch (Greg Farinelli) -- whose matched in strength and hirsuteness by the fourth member of Monster Force Zero, Yetiboot (Shale Le Page), who may or may not be an actual Yeti. None of which prepares the team for what awaits them when the T-Rex with laser eyes gets released! And then cue up the plot twist!

Directed by Nathan Letteer and written by Letteer, Michele Pacitto, and Tyson Kroening, MONSTER FORCE ZERO isn't going to take the Academy by storm. But if you're having a convention night, or a workshopping weekend with your fellow cosplayers, this is a film that will make for some light entertainment -- and possibly even inspiring.