Seemingly lumped in as a bit of a cheapo Cloverfield or District 9 also-ran, Monsters reveals itself to be quite a bit more. The film begins several years after the devastating effects of an alien invasion along the US-Mexico border, as jaded photographer Andrew (Scoot McNairy) agrees to escort his employer’s flighty tourist daughter Samantha (Whitney Able) back into the United States. As you might expect, it doesn’t go smoothy and strife befalls them.
The first thing that struck me about Monsters is the as refreshingly differention in its depiction of the alien occupation. Cloverfield was about the initial shock of attack, District 9 the long-term political applications. Monsters stays grounded and stringently avoids the on-the-nose sensationalism seemingly inherent in the format. There isn’t a symbolic point to the way the creatures live, they’re simply there, ingrained into the fabric of everyday life, and every ancillary character treats it as a way of life, something to be tolerated rather than discussed. Edwards (who directed, wrote and shot the film) instead turns the dramatic focus on the relationship between the two protagonists as they journey through, a fittingly naturalistic back-and-forth, playing much better than the unlikely contrivances that drive Cloverfield to its climax.
Reading backstory about it, I’m stagged by how low the budget for Monsters was. It was filmed digitally, of course, but it doesn’t look like a washed-out digital production, and they don’t try to cover it up in a faux-documentary format. Edwards is able and confident in his direction and his photography, and the whole thing looks very professional. Even more mindboggling is how beautiful and well-integrated the effects are. As shown right from the outset, the invaders in this piece are giant squid-like creatures, and they look as acceptably impressive as Cloverfield‘s creature. At the same time that a big-budget blockbuster like Prince of Persia couldn’t render a damn snake that looked like it existed in the world, this little half-million dollar dollar-store production is throwing out extraterrestial cephalopods that self-generate streaks of light inside their heads.
In the acting department, there’s only two actors credited (apparently everyone else that appears onscreen just happened to be around, another inadvertantly worthwhile tenet of budget filmmaking). I recognized Scoot McNairy because he was the lead in the romantic comedy In Search of a Midnight Kiss, an another delectable, even more low-budget (or no-budget), morsel that was a spectacular achievement in a tired arena. In the two films, he has shown an impressive ability to play cynical, laconic, not particularly likable characters and keep the audience’s sympathy in his corner. Whitney Able’s character isn’t quite as intriguing, but she has a nice, believable chemistry with McNairy (which apparently isn’t an act, considering they were married last summer).
Monsters could never be the blockbuster hit Cloverfield or District 9 were, because it never wavers from its seen-it-all insistence. It never delves into visceral action for sensation’s sake. I thoroughly enjoy both films, but Cloverfield has to resort to dramatic manufacture pretty early on, and District 9 comes to rest in that old “hunter now the hunted” hail of gunfire. Monsters is much more interested in looking at the world on a human level, even if it’s a world where people are menaced by gargantuan light-up squids. The only qualm I had was that the very ending didn’t tie together enough with what we’re shown beforehand (if it hadn’t been pointed out to me, I wouldn’t have even clearly understood what they were implying with the final shot), but that’s a small qualm. Monsters is a minor marvel of sci-fi filmmaking: it’s no all-timer, but it’s intelligent, interesting, and incredibly well-made, and something that rare, on such an unlikely scale, is something that should be celebrated more often.
[Grade: 8.25/10 (B+/B) / #9 (of 61) of 2010]
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