Monsters

Following the (almost) obsessive way in which my wife and I blazed through Bones and then Buffy, we are making a dedicated effort to get more diversity into our viewing habits.  It was with this is mind then that we settled down to watch the movie ‘Monsters’ last night. 

‘Monsters’, not to be confused with ‘Monster’ in which Charlize Theron and Cristina Ricci get all scarified, is a British Sci-fi/suspense flick.  Filmed for under $500,00 using ‘guerilla film-making’ techniques: filmed on location, with minimal scripting and actors, and just using whatever people happened to be around to be the extras, it is a pretty good flick. 

A couple of quick scenes, with some story-telling in between set’s up the movie: About 6 years ago, a NASA launched space probe crashed to earth on the U.S./Mexico border.  New species and changes to existing species were noted, and so a large portion of Northern Mexico has been fenced off as the Infected Zone.  The military maintains this zone, controlling outbreaks of the ‘creatures’ with superior firepower.  Early on we can see that the creatures are dangerous to military convoys, but immune to say…an air strike.

The two main characters in the film are a young blond girl who needs to get back to the US, and a world-wise, but sometimes sleazy photographer that her rich dad has hired to get her back to the US. 

Of course, their journey isn’t as easy as hoping on a plane and flying home.  They have to first take a train to the coast, and then catch a ferry up the Atlantic coast.  The movie never quite goes into why her rich dad doesn’t hire a chartered airplane to fly her home…probably would have made for a short movie. 

Needless to say, things go poorly on their way to the coast, and the girl misses the last boat, causing her to need to travel by, truck, foot and boat THROUGH the Infected Zone north to The Wall that the Us has built to keep the creatures out.  Along the way, we are treated to some suspense-filled nights, and some deep symbolism in regards to building walls along our southern border to keep undesirables out.  There is also some character development, as we learn maybe the pretty rich girl isn’t as excited to get back to her life as she should be, and the photographer isn’t as sleazy as he seemed. 

You aren’t kept waiting too long on the aliens…they appear all through movie as silhouettes, and really the only way to describe them is as giant land octopuses.  They are strong, but it might have been more intimidating if there was a 2^nd group of smaller, faster ones. 

My first instinct is to give it 7 out of 10, but allowing for the manner in which it was made, and it’s budget, I give it 8 out of 10…I would rather watch 75 movies like this than one minute of Battlefield Earth.