MOVIE REVIEW: Monsters (2010)
I remember seeing ads for Monsters ten years ago, wanting to see it in the theaters. Now that the movie is streaming online, I decided to take a look at this sci-fi art house gem. After watching the movie, I can say the Lord moves in mysterious ways — he did not want me to see that movie then for full price. This movie was not and is not worth full price, because it’s crap.
This crap-fest starts in media res with a group of US soldiers rescuing two civilians who will not be introduced (yet). The night wraps around them, and the shot is in psuedo-night vision. It seems interesting, and the radio chatter between the escaping(?) group and their headquarters is cut short as something violently upends their vehicle. Did they trigger an improvised explosive device (IED) or hit a pothole? The reality is much worse and details this film’s narrative crutch: wrapped around a nearby billboard is a 50-kilometer long floating alien octopus-spider hybrid made from outdated (for the period) CGI. It roars into the night sky, and the soldiers give it hell. Eventually they call down air support and hit it with missiles just as the scene cuts to black.
Fading in we meet our male protagonist Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy, Batman v Superman), a photojournalist. He is tasked with scooping his boss’ recently-engaged daughter Sam (Whitney Able, A Walk Among the Tombstones) from her trip to Mexico. The two hop a train and flee to the north, where the world-building comes in again. Six years prior, a returning NASA space probe carrying extraterrestrial bio-matter crashed in north-central Mexico. It spawned massive alien creatures and infected the local ecosystem, so both the US and Mexico have cordoned off a significant part of the Mexican nation. Inside this area are the previously mentioned bad CGI monsters, and the US bombs from above while Mexico fights on the ground.
There is a place before the southern border of the Infected Zone (see left), where our heroes are told of 2 ways to get to the US border: (1) go overland through the Infected Zone with armed guard, which is unsafe or (2) catch the ferry on the next day which will take you directly to the border and skip the Infected Zone. The latter costs US$5000 per person, and the protagonists take it. After some easily-avoidable shenanigans the next day, they miss the ferry and they need to take the overland route, which costs…US$10,000 per person. Using Sam’s 20,000-dollar engagement ring, they secure overland travel to the US border wall.
That’s right: in this version of the world, some fictional American leader had a wall built along the US-Mexican border to keep out aliens…of a completely different kind. The journey north is interspersed with lots of Mexican Spanish dialogue from local actors, and White people with melancholy expressions gazing at bad CGI ruins and wreckage that doesn’t fit geographically. They travel by river, truck and on foot to cross the US-Mexico border unrestricted to learn a horrifying truth: the aliens have breached the wall into America. Hopefully people will learn that walls don’t keep out Godzilla-sized aliens (see Pacific Rim and what happened with Australia).
The last few bits were so boring I was in and out of consciousness as I watched, so I had to look up the plot on Wikipedia. I was not happy, because it turns out the first scene the movie showed us happened AFTER the opening scene, based on the radio chatter. The film didn’t give us the dignity of letting us know this whole movie was a goddamn flashback.
FUCK THIS MOVIE.
CHOICE CUTS:
- Some say our current timeline is the “Darkest Timeline”, but that means this movie’s timeline — calling it the “Not-So-Dark Timeline” — has the wall Donald Trump wants, a funded national space program AND gigantic floating octopus aliens that eat people.
- But even in this movie’s world, walls don’t work.
- I completely see how this movie could be an allegory for local immigration issues back then, but would it get the point across now?
- Sam officially has the world’s smallest bladder.
- Kaulder is as bad with his camera as Polly in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
- The male protagonist is a shit negotiator. You cannot throw your skin color and nationality at brown people like that, and expect them to cave to your whims.
- Never leave your valuables alone in a foreign land with a hooker; THE END.
- Missing the ferry was telegraphed by the advertising material. And it happened for a stupid reason, thanks to dumb-ass Kaulder and Sam catching feelings for a dude she just met while engaged to another man.
- That’s some BAD CGI even for the time period for the movie’s release. If one guy did it, I applaud his drive, but if multiple people did it and got paid there’s no excuse.
This movie is bad and fucking pretentious. I heard it got a sequel called Monsters: Dark Continent (2014), set in the Middle East with a mostly ethnic main cast — highly problematic based on the title alone.
