It's third time unlucky for this version of HG Wells's chilling fantasy about a scientist playing mix 'n' match with animals and humans in his Pacific island laboratory. Marlon Brando is outrageously over the top in the title role, but his gross and shamelessly camp madman act least has more life than Val Kilmer's morose drifter, slinking sullenly through the undergrowth. And David Thewliss walks through his role as the hapless shipwreck victim trapped on the island. There's plenty of animal snarling and growling, not to mention pouncing, but so little suspense that the film is not in the slightest bit scary, merely gruesome. Creature effects are okay, if, like the film, unmemorable.

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