Usually when filmmakers set out to make a giant monster movie, they have to figure out how to get that delicate balance between the humans and whatever rampaging Kaiju that’s chosen to lay waste to the surrounding area. It’s a tougher thing to pull off than you’d think with many attempts – even from seasoned franchises – failing to nail that sweet spot and therefore sacrificing either interesting character arcs or copious monster action in favour of the other.
However, one movie that impressively managed to flip the script was the 2010 debut of Gareth Edwards; Monsters, a sci-fi Kaiju flick that took the rather original route of dropping the monsters almost entirely and instead focused on a naturalistic, almost arthouse approach to a world irrevocably changed by the arrival of gargantuan alien life forms.
Mexico hasn’t been the same since a NASA space probe crashed back to Earth and brought with it a form of alien life that not only multiplied, but grew to form skyscraper-sized octopus creatures who cause immense damage simply by the act of moving their gargantuan mass around. As a result, half the country has been deemed an infected zone and U.S. and Mexican troops battle and bomb the creatures in order to contain them within the huge wall erected at the border.
Inside this strange new world we find Andrew Kaulder, an American photojournalist who has been given an inconvenient side-quest by his employer to meet his injured daughter, Samantha, in a Mexican hospital and escort her back to the U.S.. While Andrew would rather stay put and earn dubious dollars snapping pics of the devastation and collecting stories from witnesses, he begrudgingly agrees, but immediately finds that moving cross country in a country rotten with giant alien squids isn’t as simple as it sounds.
Plan A proves to be a bust when their train is cancelled mid-journey due to ruined train tracks and to make matters worse, both Andrew and Sam find out that if they aren’t out of the country in 48 hours, the two will be stuck in Mexico for six months due to all sea and air travel being suspended.
Their only hope is for Andrew to spend an inordinate amount of money to get Sam a ferry ticket on the last boat out the next morning, however, after a night spent drinking and bonding as they take in the local nightlife, they find that someone has stolen their passports and are unable to leave. This means they only have one option left to them; barter passage through the infected zone in order to make their extraordinarily dangerous journey home. However, as Andrew and Sam make their way through parts of the country the military has all but abandoned, they not only find that their feelings for one another are changing, they discover the aliens themselves can be as beautiful and beguiling as they are mindlessly destructive.
Anyone approaching Monsters with the hope of Godzilla levels of carnage will no doubt be horrendously disappointed as Edwards is far more interested in exploring the real world issues presented by the arrival of massive creatures and how it holds up a sci-fi tinged reflection of political and social matters the world is experiencing right now. While it’s not hard to draw the obvious parallels between having to traverse a landscape dotted with groaning beasties and the plight of immigrants risking life and limb in order to smuggle their way into America, Monsters sidesteps any obvious preaching by making the mumble-core relationship between his leads blossom into an awkwardly genuine romance.
Landing somewhere between the south of the border drama of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic and the sci-fi politics of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, Monsters proves to be something of a counterintuitive goldmine if you can get on the dreamy wavelength of its languid pacing. Eschewing building shattering set pieces, Edwards uses every second of his movie to either push the romance between the two leads or create a disturbingly convincing world where a world has simply had to get used to sharing the planet with 100 meter tall, bio-luminescent calamari. While we barely get to lay eyes on the creatures themselves, the constant effect they’ve hand on the environment is ever present, with smoke constantly billowing on the horizon, wrecked military vehicles everywhere and alien fungus flashing in the trees like lightbulbs giving a truly eerie feeling. What’s more, it’s the knowledge that the monsters only become violent when provoked by the military bombings that give the film a strange eco thread too that proves to be more intellectual than your average monster mash.
Complimenting the imagery that simultaneously feels both starkly real and profoundly dreamlike are the central performances by Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able (an actual couple at the time) that marry together the films arthouse sensibilities with the low-fi world building that easily could have gone too far either way. However, the real kudos have to go to Edwards who not only shot the film himself guerilla style in some truly inhospitable (yet undeniably gorgeous) locations, but created all the digital effects in his bedroom with off the shelf Adobe software. While it obviously proves to be quite a jump from working with ILM and WETA on his subsequent Star Wars and Godzilla movies, it’s the tangibility and sensibility of Monsters that undoubtedly proved it to be such a sensational calling card.
Much like any good sci-fi worth their salt, Monsters’ premise of a war being fought that the majority of the world no longer gives a toss about makes it extraordinarily topical even after a decade after its release – the Trumpian promise of a wall dividing America and Mexico is a reality here thanks to a very different type of illegal alien and images of creepily abandoned, American cities carry the weight of footage of a ruined New Orleans, or a destitute Detroit.
While Monsters simply isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea thanks to its pondering nature and its strangely oppressive, yet haunting tone, its dedication to upending monster movie tropes to give us an alternative present that’s deeply unsettling and gobsmackingly beautiful (often in the same scene) means that it’s an unforgettable stand out in a genre usually more interested in property damage that nailing a more human side to humongous, horny space octopi.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 
One comment