Movie Review: Monsters

Firstly a bit of background. It was shot for around half a million by Gareth Edwards, a couple of cameras and the two leads. They headed down to Mexico, did a bunch of improv and Edwards did all of the special effects using a pretty beefy but still essentially still a home computer.

The premise is this - a NASA space probe brings back some alien life, it crashes in Mexico and the result is a whole bunch of big monsters that take over half the country. Move forward a few years and the monsters have become the norm. The US has built a big wall around the infected area and because their overseas image is on the up every so often they lob over a few cruise missiles to take out a rural village or two.

It's against this backdrop that a photo journalist and a rich Daddy's little girl have to trek across the infected zone to reach the safety of the United States (try not to wonder why they don't opt to simply fly around in complete safety).

Mark Kermode on Radio 5 described it as a road movie that happened to have monsters in the background (far, far, far in the background in fact). I get that. But Christ, couldn't they have made a more interesting road movie?

There was very little formal script - most of the dialogue was improvised by the two leads. Which resulted in such sparkling exchanges as:

Girl: What are you doing tomorrow?
Boy: I don't know. What are you doing tomorrow?
Girl: I don't know.

I've heard it described as a film in the style of overhearing a conversation in a pub. Perhaps that's why I don't go to pubs - why would I want to spend my even bored witless by such inane chatter?

The film promised much - an intelligent take on the concept of alien invasion movies for once. Instead of crash, bang, wallop there would be subtly, the suggestion of menace by the slither of a slimy tentacle half hidden by the forest haze. Please God, some menace, any menace even. Someone who couldn't get their drinks bottle open perhaps.

There were so many scenes that promised much - the tension building, building, building. Something's going to happen, something bad, and then, oh, it's the next day. Lots of lingering shots of infected trees and strange alien sounds in the distance - that's a setup for the big twist at the end if ever I saw one.

Perhaps the film is best summed up by the scene when the two leads discover a town that's had the living shit kicked out of it. Roofs are off, walls are tumbled down, cars overturned. There's not a soul about.

And then one of them says - entirely seriously - "What do you think happened here then?"

The thing is - I didn't go there wanting to watch aliens fighting. But I wanted threat. I wanted tension. I wanted to watch a film where I actually feared for the main character's safety.

So only 2 out of 5 from me.