Monsters is a gritty, indy movie with a great premise that ultimately falls short. Six years ago, NASA sent up a probe to explore and/or gather some alien life. Unfortunately, on the probe’s return, it crash lands in Mexico, contaminating our planet. After six years, the weird aliens are now occupying infected sections of Mexico and are slowly making inroads into the U.S.
The plot of the movie revolves around a reporter that agrees to help get his boss’s daughter back to the U.S. Unfortunately, complications arise and the couple ends up walking through the infected zone.
Now you might look at this trailer and expect the following things: Cool aliens infecting humans, half-human, half-alien hybrids, a scene where something bursts out of a person’s chest, another scene where someone is pulled into the darkness screaming, “Noooooo!”.
You might expect a Cloverfield-like ending where everybody dies and aliens run amok. You might expect robots, future technology, laser battles, androids or light sabers. You tell me from watching this trailer.
After many, many tense scenes of the main characters nearly being killed by the aliens, none of that happens. In fact, the final scene is kind of boring. And the end scene at the beginning of the movie doesn’t really work for me. We don’t gain anything as an audience member by seeing it really. In fact, I was expecting to see the scene RIGHT AFTER that one, but then the credits roll. What happens?
Well, I guess in this type of movie, that’s not suppose to matter. We’re suppose to look at the aliens, who are essentially giant, dumb animals and say, “Ah, WE are the Monsters.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t really work either as everyone in the movie is relatively nice to the couple, except for the few souls that are key to putting them in the situation to begin with.
I could go on into more detail about why the movie doesn’t work, but overall, it just doesn’t deliver as a big alien invasion movie or a clever indie movie. It sort of bridges the gap between and fails to deliver on both. Although I wanted to like Monsters, sadly, I must give it 3 keggers out of 10.
