Monsters And Monsters - Dark Continent

The first 'Monsters' was an idie sensation. Made for less than 15,000 dollars it told the simple story of two people trying to move through Kaiju (giant monster) infected territory. The tension the director was able to create with nothing was very impressive. This is not a classic man vs monster story. It's so much better than that. You can read my review of the first film HERE.

 

 

Six years after the crash of a NASA space probe, a large area between Mexico and the U.S. is under quarantine while Mexican and American military forces fight a losing battle with the giant creatures who now live there. While covering the conflict, a photojournalist (Scoot McNairy) gets uncomfortabl… Morey close to the action when he escorts his boss's daughter (Whitney Able) through the zone to the U.S. border...

 

Monsters - Dark Continent is a sequel to that first film and a larger budget and more characters doesn't necessarily add up to a better film. In fact this one could have lost a half hour and I would have been find with that. The first one was very intimate and more of a road picture. This film picks up when the Earth is almost used to these monsters who move in giant herds across the desert. Soldiers still fight them but their rate of success is not very high. We have learned to co-exist with these alien creatures and have reach a stalemate in our battle with them. In fact the soldiers still have to deal with Iraqi insurgents just like in our real non-monster infested world. In fact without the addition of the monsters, this could play alongside films like The Hurt Locker as it focuses on the effects of warfare on the soldiers doing the fighting - regardless of who or what they are killing.

The special effects are still minimal but just as effective as in the first film. This is the kind of low budget monster movie making that I wish The Asylum could do. This film has great scenes of awe and wonder - something you would never get from say a Sharknado.

Here the script is the equal to the concept and I found myself caring a lot about what was happening to the half dozen or so main characters we were introduced to. The cinematography is fantastic as well. Half the time I could imagine these were soldiers on a distant planet but the story would not be as good as it is by being rooted in the realism of war in the Middle East. The division between the real and the unreal was handled so well here that I found myself thinking about the story long after it was done.