Most people have at least heard of Spider-Man, Iron Man and the X-Men but I doubt many have heard of Man-Thing. At a time when superhero movies were becoming increasingly popular, “Man-Thing” struggled to get much of a release. It really does not feel like a superhero movie, it’s more of a monster movie like “Lake Placid” and “Anaconda”.

People keep disappearing around the swamp in the small American town of Bywater. The young Sheriff Williams (Matthew Le Nevez) is trying to piece together what exactly is going on and he discovers that is related to the oil drilling of a Native American holy site.

In nearly any other comic book film, the focus would be on the superhero but here, ‘Man-Thing’ as he is called, barely features in it. His role in the film makes him more like the shark in “Jaws” than any of the Marvel superheroes. I will admit that the effects and costume design of Man-Thing are terrific but that’s about it. The other characters are really boring and they feel very clichéd; how many more times will we have to see a greedy businessman as the villain? You will find it so very difficult to care about any of the characters.

The creature effects are actually very good but everything else just feels really clichéd and quite predictable. “Man-Thing” is not the worst Marvel movie (it’s no “Howard The Duck”) but why was this film made? You think Marvel would have wanted to bring characters such as Iron Man and Thor to the big screen before Man-Thing. Only the most devout Marvel fans are going to want to try and dig up this fossil, for everybody else I suggest sticking to more popular films such as “Spider-Man” and “Hulk” if you want some superhero action.