7 Giant Monster Movies To Watch After Godzilla Minus Zero

After the successful 1952 re-release of King Kong, audiences were itching for more monster movies, and in response came Eugène Lourié’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. It pioneered the atomic monster genre, helped fuel the giant creature-feature craze of the 1950s, and is often cited as a direct inspiration for Godzilla.

Loosely based on Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Fog Horn,” the film is set in the Arctic Circle where an atomic bomb detonates and unwittingly releases a prehistoric creature called the Rhedosaurus. Paul Christian stars as Thomas Nesbitt, the foremost surviving witness to the creature, who must convince others it even exists, let alone how dangerous it is, before it causes havoc as it travels toward New York.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is available to rent from Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home.

As we already know, the 1950s saw a boom in giant creature features, and very few are as revered as 1954’s Them!, directed by Gordon Douglas. It is widely celebrated as the film that popularised the big bug sci-fi subgenre, inspiring the likes of Tarantula, The Giant Mantis, and Rodan with its 15-foot-long mutated ants.

In Them!, a nest of gigantic irradiated ants is discovered in the New Mexico desert, and the colony quickly becomes a national threat when two young queens and their consorts establish new colonies. A battle soon begins as the last surviving giant ant colony takes hold in the spillways and storm drains of Los Angeles.

Them! is available to stream from Prime Video, IndieFlix, Tubi, and Fawesome.

When you picture a Japanese kaiju, you likely think of a ferocious, towering beast such as Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera, or Ghidorah, rather than a depressed, widely disliked, middle-aged man. But in Dai-Nipponjin’s 2007 giant monster film Big Man Japan, that’s exactly what you get.

The mockumentary follows Masaru Daisato (played by Hitoshi Matsumoto), an uninspired, middle-aged slacker living in Tokyo who inherits a family duty. He is the sixth-generation “Big Man Japan”, transforming into a 30-meter-tall giant after receiving massive injections of high-voltage electricity. He does this while working for a subdivision of the Japanese defense ministry called the Ministry of Monster Prevention, protecting the country against other giant monsters.

Big Man Japan is available to buy on DVD from Amazon Prime.

Bong Joon Ho’s 2006 South Korean monster film The Host not only serves as a sharp political satire that draws attention to the real-life McFarland Incident, but also shifts the common focus in monster movies from military generals and scientists to a deeply dysfunctional, working-class family, making a creature feature more relatable than ever.

Set in 2000, an American military official issues an order allowing toxic formaldehyde to be poured into the Han River. Years later, a mutated amphibious monster emerges from the water, terrorizing the riverbanks and abducting a young middle school girl, Park Hyun-seo (Go Ah-sung). Her father, Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho), grandfather Hee-bong (Byun Hee-bong), uncle Nam-il (Park Hae-il), and aunt Nam-joo (Bae Doona) try to save her, battling against a strict, government-ordered quarantine.

The Host is available to stream on Prime Video.

20 Million Miles to Earth showcased Ray Harryhausen's groundbreaking stop-motion animation, bringing the 1957 film’s terrifying reptilian alien, Ymir, to life. It even inspired KISS bassist and singer Gene Simmons, who has said that his trademark stage moves were inspired by the giant monster.

The film begins with the first US spaceship to Venus crashing into the Mediterranean Sea, where a young boy, Pepe (Bart Braverman), finds a gelatinous egg in a mysterious cylinder on the nearby beach. He sells the egg to Dr. Leonardo (Frank Puglia), whose granddaughter Marisa (Joan Taylor), a medical student, is called to take care of the injured spacemen from the crash. A small creature hatches from the egg, growing rapidly in size and threatening humanity as they know it.

20 Million Miles to Earth is available to stream from FuboTV, FlixFling, IndieFlix, Philo, The Roku Channel, Hoopla, YouTube, Plex, Fawesome, and Tubi.

Starring Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able, Monsters saw director Gareth Edwards create a sci-fi epic for under £500,000, which catapulted him to stardom and led to him directing the likes of 2014’s Godzilla. He wrote, directed, acted as his own cinematographer, designed the production, and created all the computer-generated visual effects himself on a standard laptop, giving it an authentic, grounded feel.

Monsters is set six years after a NASA probe carrying extraterrestrial samples crash-lands in Central America, leading to the rapid spread of tentacled alien creatures. Cynical American photojournalist Andrew Kaulder (McNairy) is working in Mexico when he is ordered by his publisher to find his employer's daughter, Samantha Wynden (Able), and escort her to safety. However, they are left stranded without money, and to reach the US border, they must find their way through the dangerous, alien-infested Infected Zone.

Monsters is available to stream from Prime Video channels Magnolia Selects, Monsters and Nightmares, and Warriors and Gangsters, as well as from Kanopy, Hoopla, YouTube, and Darkroom.

The Lake, a 2022 giant creature feature from Lee Thongkham and Aqing Xu, is an ambitious genre flick blending practical animatronics, puppetry, and CGI despite its low budget to create a visually stunning, spine-chilling thrill ride. Reminiscent of Godzilla and Jurassic Park, the giant amphibious creature at its center was built using physical animatronics and suitmation to really immerse viewers in the action.

The film follows May (Wanmai Chatborirak), a young girl who finds a large, mysterious egg near the lake and brings it home. Her sister Lin (Sushar Manaying) demands she take it back, while her brother Keng (Thanachat Tullayachat) allows her to keep it. What they don’t know, however, is that the egg belongs to a gigantic aquatic monster that begins rampaging through the countryside and killing locals to get it back.

The Lake is available to stream from Prime Video, The Roku Channel, Fandango at Home, Plex, and Tubi.