"It's not good, but better than I would expect"

I think you might be alone in that assessment.

Sounds to me like the typical cultural stupidity. China is a stunted culture, and its creative productions simply can't get past tedious heroism and mawkish sentimentality.

The first several reviews on IMDB are written by paid commentators. Then the real reviews begin, and it's brutal. : D

Notice that one of the reviewers above says "I'm not sure who's writing these [positive] reviews". I guess he doesn't know China. Sigh.

Being a decent fellow, you should go and give the movie 4/10, which will raise its average.

Downloading now... we'll see!

You see, I would have expected it to be the worst movie I ever saw. But it wasn't. It takes a lot of effort watching it. 

Granted, I went into watching it with a negative attitude... but I gave up about 45 mins in.

The CGI of the 'monsters' was crap - laughable crap.

Some of the acting was ok.. and some was really really bad!

it deserves its 4/10.

A major problem with Mainland China movies stems from the China cult.  For over half a century PRC is wiped clean of all religions, in their place is amoral communism. There is no right or wrong, as long as you are the one last standing, you get to define what "right" / "wrong" is, you can write history (i.e. what happened) any way you like. Hell, your enemies are all dead, who is there to argue with you?   On a mentality level, most mainlanders are a clone of the Kims of North Korea. They think they can get away with this on a planet with >7 billion humanoid population.

There is no question Judeo Christianity heavily influenced Western culture. One can even say it is its bedrock.  In this culture there is right and wrong, there is conscience, and there is compassion.  Western movies, a product of this kind of culture,  therefore always have this theme --- universal love, helping each other regardless of race, culture, making the WORLD a better place, treat everyone as equals in terms of basic human rights....etc.  None of these exist in the mainland china cult.  In truth, PR  denotes Public Relations and C, Cult.

This is a main reason why mainland movies are nothing but blood, violence, which gets to be boring after awhile. There is nothing spiritual about them. Dalurens (at least their "education"  system does not teach them) aren't here to make the world a better place, they aren't even here to make the land they live on a better land (just look the AQI index, water pollution....). Most of them aren't even interested in helping each other out, heck, they don't even trust each other (rightly so, though). The majority, short of the 100% brainwashed fanatical zombies (wumaos), if given the chance would immediately get the hell out of PRC even if they have to run with bare feet, as long as developed countries would grant them permanent stay.

How on Earth can movies produced in a cult like be welcomed by the "West"?  You tell me.

This reminds me of a teacher who told me the story of giving an exam for an english major creative writing class. The final exam was the movie clip of the end of Titanic and the exam was to write a story of 500 words about the couple assuming Jack lives instead of dies at the end. Nobody wrote anything over 50 words and he had to do a retest.