Monsters

This movie begins with some grainy night vision footage showing a patrol of American soldiers fighting a huge tentacled creature that is perched on the top of a large building.

Of course that peeked my interest. Tentacles always mean bad things happen to good humans.

The daughter of a magazine publisher was injured in the attack and a reluctant photo journalist is recruited by her father to bring her out of Mexico and back to safety.


They couple are under time pressures on top of the dangers they face from the unpredictable aliens. They have to reach the coast in 48 hours if they have hope to be evacuated from Mexico. It seems the creatures are migrating south and soon all water routes out of the country will be blocked.

It seems that half of America is deemed an 'infested zone' after a deep space probe returned to earth with these alien creatures aboard. Since the aliens arrived, it has been a struggle for the militaries of both America and Mexico to contain the monsters.

The populations of both countries have lived under the treat of these monsters for the past six years. There are even cartoons on TV to show children how to put on gas masks to protect themselves in the event that fighter planes have to drop gas bombs toxic to the aliens.


It's amazing how the lives of the people just go on as usual in these circumstances. They don't have the means to escape to someplace else so they live on the hope that the creatures will not chose to attack their cities. What else can they do? It's been years since the aliens first arrived and the military has yet to destroy them all.

The photo journalist and the girl argue about his job along the way. She sees him as someone who is trying to profit from the misery the creatures cause. He thinks she is naieve about the way the world really works. It's the start of an attraction between the two.

When they get to the ocean they find that it will cost $5000 for her to take a ferry to America. The only other way to go is to take your chances in the 'infected zones' which is basically Northern Mexico and the American Southwest. Circumstances lead this couple to embark on the more dangerous route against their better judgement.


We get a strong sense of the way things are in this brave new world. The pressures have made some people more generous and others more corrupt as they all live under the threat of alien invasion. Handheld cameras are often employed to show the frenetic movements of these two through the crowded city streets and the dense jungle. Tension is created by what we DON'T see than by what we DO see and that was a smart decision for the director and screenwriter to make. The worst horror is always what we imagine in our minds.

This has all the markings of an independent film and a tight budget is why we don't get to see the creatures. Glimpses of the aliens are shown on grainy tape on the TV news but the movie seems to be more concerned with the photographer and the girl than with showing them fight any monsters. The film is more of a character study. On that level it does succeed.

It originally felt like a rip-off to call the movie 'Monsters' and have it turn into some 'boy meets girl' road film. Once I got over the fact that there weren't going to be to many actual monsters, I still found things to like about this film. The title is the biggest thing the movie has working against it.

In my reading I learned that many people were touting this as the new 'District 9'. The film was made on a very low budget, maybe as low as 15,000 dollars. This is from the official synopsis.


"The breakout hit of this years SXSW, Gareth Edwards’ groundbreaking new film is as much a poignant contemporary romance as it is an epic science fiction adventure. Shot with just a five person crew and a cast of two, Gareth Edwards’ team traveled through Guatemala, Belize and Mexico, finding and utilizing their locations and supporting actors as they went. The result is a film as cutting edge as it is classically composed, as emotionally satisfying as it is visually stunning, and the bold announcement of a major new talent.".

Pretty remarkable once you see the finished product. Just don't be expecting 'Independence Day'.