Review of Monsters (2010) by William W — 07 Apr 2012

Monsters is a 2010 monster movie written and directed by Gareth Edwards. I mainly watched this movie because Edwards has gained enough attention in Hollywood through this movie to be attached to a new Godzilla movie that is due out in 2014. Godzilla is one of my favorite characters in all of media, so I wanted to see if I thought Edwards had potential to do Godzilla justice.

The basic concept of the movie is that alien creatures have invaded the Earth and the main character's boss's daughter (that's a mouthful!) was around an area that was attacked, so the main character has to get her home.

My main problem with the movie is that it never really committed to a genre. The name of the film, Monsters, makes you think that this is a monster movie. However, the monsters are only a backdrop. The only purpose they really serve is to come off as an allegory comparing how the aliens are treated to how Americans treat immigrants. This is more of a romance movie than a monster movie.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good romance movie, but many romance movies have done what Monsters did, but much, much better, and without the illusion of being a monster movie. I felt like the movie was confused.

As a monster movie, I feel like the two most common, and best, methods of unveiling the monster is to either bring it out early in the movie and let it destroy everything, or to barely show anything other than very brief shots of the monster, not allowing the audience to really know what it is to create suspense, then unveil it at the end.

Monsters did neither of those things. The monster is shown in the first five minutes of the movie, then another monster isn't seen again for a long time, and there's barely any destruction.

I won't say that Monsters is bad--there were a lot of restrictions, such as not having a solid script and having a low budget--I think it was solid for an indie movie, but my problem is that it's just not a true monster movie. I will say, though, that the cinematography was gorgeous.

I have hope for Edwards as Godzilla's next director, I just hope that the bigger budget and having a solid script will help him make a great monster movie rather than just an okay one.

6.5/10.