Flick Flak: Monsters
Directed by: Gareth Edwards
Starring: Scoot McNairy, Whitney Able
It’s hard to talk about this film without constantly referring to the incredible fact that Gareth Edwards made it practically single-handed and on a shoestring budget. Sure, independent films are often made with relatively zero money compared to the average movie, but I have never before seen a film that looks like this for the sort of money involved.
IMDB estimates Monsters’ budget at $200,000. Just for the sake of comparison, Avatar reportedly cost $310,000,000. The beauty of Monsters is that you could never guess how cheap it was to make by watching it. But I don’t want to just judge the film in terms of ‘bless, didn’t he do well?’ It truly is one of the best films I’ve seen this year, and a real subversion of the sci-fi/ monster genre.
However, Monsters is most notable for how it looks. It was all filmed on location when Gareth Edwards was in Mexico with his own camera (and without permission gained in advance), and the stunning locations used are all real. I lost count of the number of vistas which caused the hairs on the back of the neck to stand up; there are some really beautiful shots.
Also striking are the scenes of destruction, some of which were real (for instance Edwards filmed in hurricane-struck regions of America) and some digitally edited. Such is the quality of his work that you cannot tell which have been altered (though obviously some you can guess.)
Normally, a film like this needs to rely on not showing the monster, but rather to create tension by hiding them. Monsters flies in the face of the usual rules, and Edwards is proud to show off his creations. They are supposedly aliens which crashed to Earth on a NASA probe, and have, over the course of six years, established themselves in a cordoned-off ‘infected zone’ through which the protagonists of the film must venture in order to get home.
The aliens are believable, looking like something that could live in the deep seas of Earth, and behave like wild animals rather than evil B-movie nasties, so that the audience even empathises with them. Early on, shots of them are used to illustrate the fact that people are no longer shocked by them - they are simply a nuisance.
In interviews Edwards has compared the situation to that of the public’s reaction to events in Afghanistan- Iraq (the invasion) was shocking and the violence awful, but now we are de-sensitised and even bored by reports of the continuing conflict.
Despite its title, Monsters is a love story first and foremost. Real-life couple Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able are brilliant as the pair who are forced together, and their story is one of two people who come to like each other through sharing dangers and tribulations. Never too sentimental, and always thoroughly realistic (probably because the dialogue is improvised, their scripts only telling them what was happening in each scene), I believed in the characters as real people who were falling in love, which I think carries the film.
Monsters is a slow-burner, with incredible subtlety to its storytelling- anyone expecting the typical monster movie will be bored / pleasantly surprised by the lack of explosions and a spoon-fed plot. It is a hybrid of the subtle yet powerful emotion of Lost in Translation, the wonder and trepidation of Jurassic Park, and the bleakness of 28 Days Later.
It deserves to be seen, and I can’t wait to see what Gareth Edwards does next.
3 Comments – Post a comment
Tom_Bevan
Commented 66 months ago - 9th December 2010 - 13:56pm
as always, great review :)
I really want to see this movie now- thanks for sharing!
looks very good I have to say
luke_wr
Commented 66 months ago - 9th December 2010 - 18:15pm
Really good review,
I saw the film last weekend, and I have to say that I completely agree with your points on the beauty of the film. It's incredibly well made, and small details, like the CGI helicopters always travelling in the same direction and sub plots that don't really take off, are easily overlooked. But to warn anyone else, if your seeing this movie on the basis of the title. Don't believe it's particlarly action-like or frightening. There's parts where it is in no doubt tense and quite scary, but don't expect to be shocked by the monsters, but the cinematography.
Dan (Sub-Editor)
Commented 65 months ago - 16th December 2010 - 00:13am
Just got back from seeing this with Sprinklelight (thanks to Orange Wednesday plus her magic card, neither of us hard to pay! Win. :) ), and we both walked away with very different opinions
While she loved the film, I felt it dragged: the development of the relationship between the characters, for me, wasn't enough to carry this story through. I suppose I'm a typical male in that I openly wanted more information on the aliens and how the world dealt with and adapted to their presence. The trailer promised "spooky, chilling, deep and sci-fi" and made me think it would be a scary version of (the utterly brilliant) District 9. I suppose the fact that this film was nothing of the sort is what caused me to be disappointed with it. The title didn't fit with the type of movie this was, and I found the ending just very... meh.
Guess I'll just have to be the devil's advocate in this case.