Frightfest 2010: Monsters

Gareth Edwards film is truly unique, having been made for a budget of $15,000 and having a crew consisting of two people and a van. The film also utilized whoever was around on location as extras and is truly low budget guerilla film making. Monsters manages to be more thrilling,moving and heartfelt than many genre films with a hundred times the budget.

The story unfolds in a world where alien life has been discovered by a NASA probe sent to investigate which then crashes back to the earth bringing some new life forms with it. Sometime later giant squid like creatures start to appear in Mexico destroying much of the country. The US commences a bombing campaign and erects a huge wall along its border to prevent the alien menace from spreading. Journalist Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) is tasked by his boss with bringing back his aid worker daughter Samantha (Whitney Able) from central America. The two form a bond and a twist of fate means they have to travel through the infected zone to get back to the United States. On their travels they witness the extent of the destruction, have to avoid the giant beasts and fall in love.

At Frightfest this film came after the I Spit On Your Grave remake which was a real crowd pleaser in terms of its gore but not a film with anything new to say. Monsters is not a slow film, its a thoughtful one and due to its low budget it has to be more creative with how it chooses to present its carnage. This is not Cloverfield or District 9 to which its been unfairly compared. Monsters is closer to something like Lost in Translation with giant squids. As a result walking out of the film you could feel and hear some of the disappointment from the gorehounds. People complained that this was a film where you didn’t see anything. You do see things, great things, beautifully shot and realized creations but they are not the focus here. Gareth Edwards chooses to build the tension through clever use of sound effects and a slow reveal of the monsters. A jet fighter is shown being dragged underwater by a tentacle, a convoy is attacked in the middle of the night while travelling through the jungle and several night vision TV news broadcasts which are reminiscent of the coverage of the Iraq invasion. This makes the eventual full scale shots of the creatures that much more thrilling. Unlike Cloverfield, Edwards remembers to make you actually care about the characters, by not casting vacuous Calvin Klein models and using good actors. Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able as Andrew and Samantha are brilliant, both lost souls in a world gone mad who find a connection. Andrew has a son who he never sees and Samantha is trapped in an unhappy relationship. Mcnairy and Able have amazing chemistry, its no coincidence that these two actually got married in real life recently, you can see there is something between them and it adds to the emotional impact of the film.

I was mesmerized by Monsters. At one point I was so into the film that during a surreal moment, I jumped out of my seat much to the amusement of those around me. This film is a real achievement, melding several genres at once to create something truly amazing and for an ultra low budget. It is without doubt one of the best films of 2010.

Monsters hits UK cinemas in November, US cinemas on limited release in October and on demand around the same time. If you love your genre cinema and have been disappointed with 2010 so far, you owe it to yourself to seek it out.

By Chris Holt