Monsters
Review submitted by David Tredler
What you think of a film sometimes (only partly of course) depends on the setting, on "how" you see it. I saw Monsters in early September, at a film festival, without any previously-seen images in my head beyond a couple of posters I saw on the Internet. I didn't exactly know what it was about, except that there were going to be aliens involved, and I certainly did not know what they would look like. I didn't know, going in, what to expect, but from what I had heard, I thought it would be a cheap but gripping feature.
The first thing, then, that needs to be said about Gareth Edwards' Monsters is that it may be cheap on paper, but it comes across as anything but onscreen. This was a film that was made for barely half a million dollars, but looks like it benefited from many times that amount, thanks to an amazing visual universe developed by Edwards and his crew. What's equally amazing is the script, which creates a strong and believable mythology. Six years before the events of this film, a NASA space probe, returning to earth after taking extraterrestrial samples, crash-lands in Mexico. A few months later, weird alien life forms develop, and a sizable portion of the country is put under quarantine. This "infected zone", meticulously delimited by huge walls and strict controls, shelters giant monsters. An American photograher (Scott McNairy), hoping to take pictures near the border within said zone (in San Jose, to be precise), is also tasked with bringing his boss's daughter (Whitney Able) back to the States.
The setting is simply remarkable. Obviously shot on location in Central America, Monsters does not feel the least bit fake. Every shot, every scene is full of truth in this universe of misery and chaos, realistic enough to feel that such a happenstance may occur in our society, while injecting a sci-fi sting: buildings on fire, road signs indicating the danger, news reports on every TV screen... it may seem trivial, but those are details that weave the strength of the narration's supernatural aspects. Once this basis is solidly built, the story can follow its course, and the audience's attention is assured. Mine sure was.
In fact, my attention was so absolute that when the film refused to go down the road that I truly expected it to, that of a fast, chilling, action-packed film, I accepted it without hesitation. Had Monsters missed its setting, a slow, wandering story that followed might have bugged me. But the meticulousness with which the visual universe was created, in spite of the miniscule budget, pushes you to hook on the surprising angle adopted to deal with this road movie in a dangerous land. The film walks, explores, and speeds up only to slow down again. When it becomes clear that our protagonists will have to travel through the infected zone, we expect the film to swing into a run-for-your-life horror movie, but it does not. Edwards instead pursues his desire to explore the mythology he has built, and uses it to go well beyond a simple action film. A social and romantic drama as much as a sci-fi/adventure film, Monsters flirts with political metaphor, the migratory, war, and the ecological worries of our time, and thus affirms itself as a bright and original science fiction film.
Monsters sacrifices action in order to not let itself be captured by the limits of one particular genre. Barely more than ninety minutes is all it takes for the film to reinvent itself (several times), and it continually avoids taking the easy way out. The danger is unpredictable, the monsters are not all that monstrous, and the possibilities become infinite. When the lights come back on in the theater, it is a surprise. A surprise by how far Edwards could have gone when it all just stops; the potential of a filmmaker and a screenplay that could have gone further, well beyond what it already was. I wish it hadn't ended so soon. Maybe with a few thousand dollars more... who knows? When you think of how many millions it takes for Michael Bay to complete a mere three minutes of Transformers footage, it becomes crystal clear that the money is in the wrong hands.
4 / 5 stars
