You’ll see how misguiding this is when you see the film.
Monsters was not at all what I expected… and this time that is not a good thing.
In Monsters the Earth has made contact with aliens, these beasts are a couple storeys tall and look like giant octopuses, only they have far more than the standard 8 legs. (They are referred to as only “the creatures” in the film, which seems a missed opportunity to give them a disparaging nickname like squids or perhaps something more creative than ‘creatures’.)
Monster contact is infrequent but when it occurs it results in much death and destruction… We don’t get to see them too often though, the one thing I learned most is that this is NOT a monster movie.
Monsters follows two people as they attempt to move from Mexico to the US. Andrew is a photographer, and he is charged with making sure Sarah, the young daughter of his boss arrives back safe. He has a 48 hour window to do so before the area is quarantined…
This trek involves travelling by train, bus, some walking and hitching and ultimately a ferry to the States.
On the final night before the ferry departs the pair head out to unwind a little, ‘complications’ arise – suffice to say Andrew, a hooker and the cash, tickets and passports are involved – and the ferry departs without either Andrew or Sarah aboard.
An on-the-fly Plan B is devised which takes them through the ‘Infected Zone’ (a big no-no area), and necessitates dealing with various dodgy characters who know things – at the right price – that can get them to the Mexico / US border, which has been walled off to prevent the creatures from bothering good American citizens.
Andrew and Sarah are perfectly well rendered characters, each with reasons to want to return to the US that go beyond being devoured or crushed by 50 foot calamari, and their relationship becomes more and more desperate and necessary as they progress.
You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned any contact from the creatures for a while, that’s because there are only a few scenes in the film in which they feature. This isn’t necessarily a big deal but the fact is the scenes in which they don’t appear aren’t that tense or interesting either.
I thought that the film was well made too, and believe me I was looking for reasons to give it a 7 or even a 6.5 to suggest there were at least a couple of reasons to check it out… but if you’re gonna call a film Monsters, then you stock it with giant creatures and have people essentially on the run from them for 90 minutes, either make the journey interesting or have more interaction with the menace.
Final Rating – 6 / 10. An absence of action renders this species of ‘Monsters’ extinct, call it death by boredom.
