Gareth Edwards’ Monsters

Last Chance Lance and Feedback, Rue Morgue Radio's Caustic Critics, split on Gareth Edwards' Monsters; so I consulted the only higher authority, my brother. He is the only person I know who likes Sci-Fi/Horror as much as I do. Dave made it two to one in favor. It's on Netflix Instant Watch. With some serious caveats, I give it a thumbs up.

The film opens with the simplest method for conveying background information: print it in white on a black screen. We learn that a NASA probe bearing samples of extraterrestrial life crash landed in Northern Mexico. An "infected zone" now stretches all the way from one coast to the other and it's literally crawling with large, cranky monsters. Put an octopus on top your basic crab chassis, blow it up to about a hundred feet tall, and you get the idea. Or imagine the biological equivalent of the Martian machines in War of the Worlds.

This is a case where less information would have been better. The explanation raised more questions than it answered and the essential information was conveyed by the next images: milky television footage of the monsters running amok in some Mexican town. It would have been eerier to leave it at that, or maybe drop some clues later.

A photojournalist is ordered by his boss to escort the boss's daughter back to the United States after she is injured in the aforementioned monster romp. Due to a series of misadventures, they end up having to walk through the infected zone.

There are holes in this plot big enough to fly a starship full of extraterrestrial aliens through. There are, after all, a lot of ways to get from Central Mexico to the U.S. without going through Northern Mexico, at least if you have a passport and your dad has cash. Of course a romantic/sexual tension arises immediately between the jaded photographer and the young woman, but that is so obligatory in an American movie that its presence is almost a tautology. Fortunately it is kept on the back burner long enough that (with the exception of one very goofy scene) it doesn't turn the movie into a joke.

All that said, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. It was more than amusing to find out that even after Northern Mexico is overrun with deadly octopoid monsters, and even after the United Sates builds a real wall to keep the monsters out, you can still hire a coyote to get you across. This was not one of the movie's implausibilities.

Three things made the movie work for me. One was the simple use of official warming signs along the road, rather like the Wicked Witch's "I'd turn back if I was you" signs in the Wizard of Oz. The ubiquitous signs created a sense that one was moving ever closer to some terrible menace. Jet bombers flying over did nothing to lessen the tension. Better yet, the cinematography was superb and the pacing was perfect. Our heroes move steadily through a flamboyantly gorgeous landscape and encounter a host of vivid faces, each one of which you'd like to see more of.

The third thing is that Edwards borrowed the style of the modern travel drama. Stretches of this movie could be mistaken for a Michael Winterbottom film. Like most such movies, Monsters is essentially a Heart of Darkness story. Two middle class Americans go abroad and discover that they are not only in another country but, in this case almost literally, on another planet. The horror, etc., etc. The horror, moreover, is leaking out in both directions.

The writing frequently goes off the rails when some character has to tell us what we don't need to be told. We are shown what we need to know. This is a flawed movie, but I thought it was a lot of fun. If Joseph Conrad with giant octopi is your cup of tea, log on to Netflix and dial this one up.

Comments

[Mark Anderson]

You are absolutely right about this film, it puts all the horrible films on the
syfy channel to shame. Perhaps you should have mentioned how cheaply it was made, and that the director made the aliens on his laptop. Here's a good site for the cost and making of the film: http://www.slashfilm.com/how-gareth-edwards-shot-monsters-on-an-incredibly-low-budget/. Really, the film is a treat.

[KB]

Thanks for the comment Mark. I have heard that the CG effects were done by the director on his laptop. I have a hard time believing it. They were very effective.

[Ruchi]

Happy Holidays, Marieke, to you and your loved ones! (Typed two days after Chrismas, but still ) Looking forward to sneeig more Monstrous Issues in the new year!

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