Monsters: A review

I was excited to find a pre-theatrical rental of the film on Amazon this weekend, excited enough to pay as much online to see the film as I would in the theater and then disappointed to have paid that much.

I found Monsters to be incredibly disappointing for such a good movie. I am a huge fan of Cloverfield, The Mist and District 9 and after watching the trailer I expected a good mix of all three of these films in Monsters. The film was beautiful, the acting well-done the monsters looked neat. I really blame the trailer for my disappointment in the film, everything you see in the trailer makes up about 90% of the aliens in the movie, except for one scene right at the end.

Let me be clear, Monsters is a good movie, but Monsters is not a monster movie...it's not horror, it's just barely sci-fi. Imagine Cloverfield was about people being evacuated, but instead of being at the epicenter of the attacks, the movie was about a couple being evacuated from New Jersey and we'd see Clover on a television in the background sometimes. That's how much of a monster movie this was. You know how some Godzilla movies take a long time getting to the big monster fight? I've always imagined hell was a really long version of that...Godzilla and Ghidorah moving slowly closer to each other across Japan while the military and scientists talked about the upcoming fight FOR ETERNITY! That's how Monsters played me...I kept waiting and waiting for a sudden vicious monster attack, danger, suspense, fear...monsters!

But, if you go into the movie with no presuppositions, you're one of those insane people who run into a video store and ask the person behind the counter to surprise you, you could like this movie. I think the studio is selling it wrong and is going to piss a lot of people off. It's a good movie, a movie about people, a movie with a subtle (for a change) political message and it is very beautiful to watch. And after finding out it was made for only $15K? I am really impressed by it. Once again though, if you want to see Monsters based on the trailer, you may be disappointed. If you want to see monsters, see the Mist or Cloverfield. If you want political messages delivered with rockets and lasers, see District 9. If you want to see a surprising well made movie about two people with a backdrop of alien invasion, see Monsters. It's really not that bad.