Orang Ikan (Monster Island)

A Japanese soldier and a British POW, enemies during WWII, are shipwrecked on a deserted island and hunted by a monstrous creature, forcing them to overcome their differences in order to survive.

You may recall, in late October of 2024, I traveled to Trieste, Italy.

A port city in the far northeastern corner of Italy, Trieste is a mix of Italian, Austro-Hungarian, and Slovenian influences set hard up against the head of the Gulf of Trieste in the Adriatic Sea. Known as the “City of Coffee,” it was considered to be the end-point of the maritime leg of the famous trade route known as the Silk Road, and was an important deep-water port owned by the House of Habsburg, an aristocratic family that was as powerful as it was inbred. These days, Trieste is just a nice little seaside city, recently featured in the film Heads of State, and every October, it has a film festival called the Trieste Science Fiction Festival. It’s a really festival. If you have the means, I highly recommend going.

The reason we went to Trieste was two-fold. One, we wanted to travel outside of the U.S. before the Trumper Christian Nazis started doing their white supremacist bullshit at the borders. And two, I wanted to go to the Trieste Science Fiction Film Festival, as COVID, as well as the greed and the weirdly cliquish/nepotism of the owners of the Alamo Drafthouse, had finally managed to ruin my Fantastic Fest fun forever, so I hadn't been to something like that in a while.

While I was in Trieste, I was able to see several films, but this one, Orang Ikan, or Monster Island, as it's known in some places, a co-production between Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, and the United Kingdom, was not one of them. It was one that I would have liked to seen, but I missed it for one reason or another. Such is the way of things at film festivals. Hard choice must be made sometimes. And it wasn't the only one I missed either, there were multiple films I would've seen, if I could have, but didn't. But the good news is, almost all of those movies are streaming now, so I'm catching up.

So...

The Kai Islands of Indonesia are a group of islands in the southeastern part of the Maluku Islands. Long known as the Spice Islands to Europeans invaders, due to the availability of things like nutmeg and cloves, the waters around the islands are considered to have some of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world.

Thus... the Orang Ikan.

Translated from Malay and Indonesian to literally mean "fish man," the Orang Ikan is an aquatic humanoid cryptid. It has a long history of indigenous legends, but the first modern reports were from Japanese soldiers stationed in the area toward the end of WW2.

At the time, the Orang Ikan were described as mercreatures with shoulder length hair, spines along the neck, and about 4 feet tall. They were said to have webbed hands and feet, and a mix of human and ape-like features, with a broad nose and a prominent brow, a carp-like mouth filled with rows od tiny, needle-like teeth, and prominent spines atop their heads. So, basically, they're a lot like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but with a mullet.

A "Hell Ship" was what the Allies called the ships that Japanese forces used to transport Allied Prisoners of War. Without any kind of markings that the Allies could identify, these ships were often mistakenly targeted by Allied forces. By the war's end, more than 30,000 Japanese and Allied soldiers died on these ships.

Our story begins aboard one such "Hell Ship" in the South Pacific...

Chained together at the ankles, Saito is a Japanese soldier accused of treason, and Bronson is a British POW. When the ship transporting them is attacked by a squad of ally planes, and then sunk by an allied submarine, the pair seize the opportunity to escape, jumping overboard.

They wash ashore on an unknown island.

First, they fight, because, y'know... the war.

But since the one gun they find just has one bullet, and they're still chained together, it's mostly just slap-fighting and rolling about in the surf. But then they get attacked mid-fight by an Orang Ikan. After they manage to chase it off, they end up deciding to work together, hesitantly communicating despite the language barrier and y'know... the war. They break their chains. They gather supplies from the wreckage of their ship that has washed ashore, as well as off the corpses of the sailors and the prisoners too. They catch some dinner in the surf, and build a fire. Honestly, by evening time, things are looking up. It's not a bad little thing they've got going on here. Maybe they could even build a real life together, a life of peace, one where the war is far away, and long forgotten...

Unfortunately, the Orang Ikan is lurking.

But then a pair of Japanese soldiers and a Malaysian servant arrive, having also washed ashore. Bronson hides, and Saito tries to stall them, but the soldiers start to get suspicious. Things look like they're gonna go south for Bronson and Saito, but that's when the Orang Ikan attacks again, sick of nobody paying attention to them on their own island. The creature kills the soldiers and the panicking servant, ripping off heads and kicking out guts. The beach is painted in blood. Saito grabs one of the dead soldier's katanas as the creature chases both him and Bronson deeper into the island's jungle.

The pair ditch the fish man, but they get separated.

Saito discovers a wrecked Japanese fighter plane, along with the body of a long dead Japanese pilot still hanging from a tree, tangled in his parachute. Nearby, he finds the corpse of another Orang Ikan, this one obviously dead from the pistol that is still clutched in the dead pilot's hand. Now armed with a pistol and a sword, Saito is ready for all comers. Bronson, meanwhile, doesn't find a thing, he mostly dodges the other Orang Ikan, who still has a hard-on for killing everyone, but eventually he catches up to Saito. Together, they find a shovel and a bomb on the fighter plane. Then they find the Orang Ikan's home cave, as well as an Orang Ikan baby in that cave, gestating in a sticky womb-sack pasted to the cave wall. The pair decide that, if they want to live a life of peace on this island, then first they'll need to murder the island's only other inhabitant... and their baby. So, they decide to haul the bomb into the cave, lure the Ornag Ikan there, and then blow up the bomb and Orang Ikan and it's baby. The only problem is... whoever sets off the bomb will definitely blow up too.

But then there's an unforseen second problem, the other Orang Ikan shows up before they're ready, and they all fight. Saito kills the baby as a distraction, but also because fuck them kids, and a gravely injured Bronson sets off the bomb, killing himself, but Saito and the Orang Ikan survive, so his sacrifice was all vain.

After that it's samurai versus fish man on the beach of blood...

Inspired by the reports of Orang Ikan made by Japanese soldiers in WW2, writer/director Mike Wiluan's film wears its influences very clearly on its sleeve. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Hell in the Pacific. Predator. Island of the Fishmen. Maybe even Enemy Mine. Those are all clearly apparent here. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that JD Dillard’s Sweetheart was an influence too. The nice thing about this, is that unlike some films, Orang Ikan doesn't just rip-off the films that inspired it, basically remaking famous scenes, instead they are clear influences woven into the film's beating heart.

Touching on themes about the horrors of war and colonialism, as well as the healing of historic wounds, as well as humanity's indifference to nature, and it's willingness to destroy that which it does not understand, Orang Ikan, or Monster Island, is the story of enemies who are forced by circumstance to become friends in order to survive a greater foe. It doesn't quite capitalize on any of the themes, nor does it really have all that much to say about anything, other than action and gore and monsters are fun, but I think a lot of that is due to the restraints of its budget and its 80-ish minute runtime.

Because while Orang Ikan is nothing too "splashy," or really anything all that worth writing home about, it's still a good time. Yes, this film is clearly operating on a shoestring budget. Yes, it moves a little too quickly. Yes, it doesn't quite have enough narrative meat on its bones. Yes, its characters are too shallowly defined. Yes, the film seems to think otherwise, so it's big dramatic "honorable friendship" moments come off as way over-blown. Yes, the entire idea behind this film is the Orang-Ikan was kinda just minding its own business, then its home was invaded, and somehow that makes it the bad guy. These are problems, yes, that's true.

But still... it's a fun movie.

Silly and light and struggles a bit, sure, but fun enough. It didn't have a lot of CGI blood, and the effects were mostly practical, which is always great, even if they're cheap. Plus, I loved the "man in suit" approach to the monster. And it really is a great suit too, with the classic Creature from the Black Lagoon meets The Shape of Water vibes, and I loved that they didn't try to hide that fact by keeping things too dark. For the most part, this film is either clearly lit night-time, or the bright light of day, and I thought the way they just embraced their "man in suit" was charming. Plus, I loved that when the Malay servant is panicking, yelling "Orang Ikan!" over and over again as the beast is tearing up the Japanes soldiers, he's basically just sitting there and repeating "fish man! fish man!" That just kind of tickled me.

Anyway, Orang Ikan (or again... Monster Island, depending) is a good Sunday matinee that's definitely worth checking out.