How am I supposed to root for a hero with a tramp stamp?

Generally speaking, I like genre movies. Horror, sci-fi, dog-cop buddy comedies, all that fun stuff. A well-done genre piece is doubly satisfying: not only do you get the enjoyment of watching a quality flick, but you also get the satisfaction of watching something that transcends the low-budget schlock and rubbish that predominates genre films. Conversely, a genre film also has the potential to be doubly disappointing, as is the case with Gareth Edward’s Monsters.

Monsters had so much potential to be a great genre film. A decent plot (aliens are living along the US-Mexico border and a photojournalist needs to escort the daughter of his publisher safely back to the US), very good cinematography (shot by the writer-director Edwards), and nice use of special effects (also done by Edwards) that help conceal the low-budget nature of the film (estimated $800,000 budget, according to IMDb). Unfortunately, writer-director-cinematographer-production designer-special effects guy Edwards apparently didn’t want to make a genre film. The fundamental flaw of Monsters is that the film is desperately trying to avoid being a genre film, while liberally ripping off a variety of other, better genre films.

To trace the problems with Monsters, we much first trace the path of narrative thievery that meanders through the film. The movie starts of as Cloverfield, with hand-held night-vision camerawork documenting an attack of a giant monster. The monsters (which are technically aliens, but we’ll get to that later) are essentially giant land-kraken, so the argument could be made that Monsters is borrowing from Pirates of the Caribbean or Clash of the Titans or China Miéville’s wonderfully awesome novel Kraken. But I think the concept of a giant land-krakens roaming Central America is fairly universal, so I won’t fault Edwards for using land-kraken in his film. I also should give credit where credit is due: the five minutes that open Monster are exponentially better than anything in Cloverfield. One of the strengths of Monsters is Edwards’ cinematography. He shows an admirable adeptness as shooting night sequences and using the darkness of the night to hide his budgetary limitations. But sadly, not all of Monsters is nighttime footage of rampaging land-kraken.

As I mentioned earlier, Monsters is a film ashamed of being a genre film. It tries ever so hard to be something more. Edwards the writer tries to turn the film into an indie character drama, complete with indie drama stereotypes like non-professional actors and allegedly improvised dialogue. But Edwards the casting agent failed miserably in one regard: the stars of Monsters are not the level of actors that can get away indie drama artistry. This isn’t Chrisotpher Guest and his stable of improv wizards, it’s the guy who played Beg-Bug on an episode of My Name is Earl. The “opportunistic” (according to IMDb) dialogue is awful, and without decent dialogue, there’s no chance for the characters to be developed in any meaningful way.

Both characters are types, but not genre film types. There’s no tough kickass woman or world-weary man. The two main characters are a spoiled, beautiful rich girl who has real problems (she’s just like the rest of us!!) and a sleazy douchebag who, with the worldly guidance of the spoiled, beautiful rich girl who has real problems, learns to become slightly less of a douchebag. It’s character development (if it could even be called that) at its most elementary and uninspired level. So we’ve got two uninteresting characters who get out-acted by pretty much every non-professional actor in the movie, but there’s one character who we haven’t addressed yet: the land-kraken. Unfortunately, Edwards doesn’t spend very much time addressing the land-kraken island.

As I mentioned in a brief plot summary above, Monsters is about aliens that come to Earth and live in a quarantine zone between the US and Mexico. Although this plot seems remarkably similar to the basic plot of District 9, Monsters never goes further than superficial similarities. Where District 9 explained the culture, history, and character of the aliens, Monsters makes no such efforts. Instead of investigating the reasons and history behind the quarantine zone, we get two characters, staring at the wall that separates Mexico from the US (which looks really good in the film), talking about whether or not they ever practiced laughing. Edwards had the opportunity to go full-on sci-fi, to make the titular “monsters” of his film a character in the film, but he chose to give us mediocre improv workshopping.

There are really only two sequences when the land-kraken come into play: the ending of the film  and a jungle sequence that is ripped straight out of Jurassic Park. The two characters are in a car when their group is attacked by the land-kraken. Some people get out of the car and are promptly killed, while our two protagonists hide quietly in the car and get to live. Oh, and the dead goat that we feel bad for in Jurassic Park is replaced with an anonymous five-year-old Mexican girl. And, naturally, the T-Rex is replaced with a land-kraken. But other than that, the major action sequence of the film is Jurassic Park redux.

That brings us to the end of the film, which share similarities with The Road and War of the Worlds. The two main characters wander through the abandoned remains of a border town, steal stuff from dead people, and encounter a crazy person with a shopping cart. And, for some reason, a phone in the convenience store still works, despite the fact that the town has evidently been bombed by an air strike. And the land-kraken come around and have sex. Or at least I think that’s what they’re doing. Whether or not the land-kraken scene was influenced by Japanese tentacle porn remains to be seen. I’m not familiar enough with Japanese tentacle porn to compare the land-kraken boning to that genre of pornography. (And yes, I’m purposefully mentioning Japanese tentacle porn again and again to lure in more misguided Googlers.) Perhaps if the land-kraken were more of a character in the film, rather than just a special effects set piece, I’d have a better understanding of what they were doing in the convenience store parking lot. Or, it could be that this is a conscious choice on the part of writer-director Edwards to be intentionally ambiguous, just like the overrated art-house films he’s trying to emulate.

After that land-kraken fucking scene, the real end of the movie rolls around. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that the ending is quite Shakespearean in magnitude. It’s the single moment in all of Monsters that Edwards manages to perfectly blend sci-fi genre excitement and clever artistry. If the whole movie could have been as good as the first and last five minutes, Monsters would be one of the greatest films ever made. Unfortunately, there’s 80 minutes of bad acting and lame attempts at character development in between. The film does avoid the clichés mainstream sci-fi films, in that there are no pissing robots and the world doesn’t explode, but it also manages to avoid the strengths of a good sci-fi films, like having more than a superficial sprinkling of science-fiction in the film. Monsters, although it had the potential to be a phenomenal sci-fi film, ends up being a mediocre indie road trip movie. So disappointing.

On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give Monsters two tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein. Monsters is not a great movie, but I will definitely keep my eye on the future films of Gareth Edwards. As a director-cinematography-production designer-special effects guy, he does a bang-up job. As a writer, he could use some help.