Monsters

           

           Monsters was a good film made awesome by the fact that it was filmed and edited by some guy on his Macbook for around 45 cents.

            Is it wrong to appreciate a movie more knowing the conditions it was filmed under?  Does it make for biased reviewing?  Probably, yeah, but I don’t care.

            What was so intriguing about Monsters, and what made it stand out apart from the plethora of other alien movies out there, was the focus it put on the relationship of the two main characters.  At times Monsters really felt like a romantic drama more than a monster flick.  This probably sounds horrible to some people, but honestly, what’s the point of a monster movie if you don’t care about the people the monster is trying to eat?  The audience has to identify with and care about the people in these types of movies for any suspense to be built up.  Monsters details the relationship of it's two main characters meticulously, and it pays off in the end.

            The scares do eventually come in Monsters, but they are more built on suspenseful scenes than sudden loud noises.  In fact, the scariest scene, in my opinion, didn’t contain a single monster in it.  With the proper background information, give me an abandoned town and an old lady pushing a cart, and I’m on the edge of my seat.

            If I had one complaint about Monsters, it was that they really beat the audience over the head with the “monsters=illegal immigrants” analogy in some scenes.  This didn’t happen frequently enough to detract from my enjoyment of the movie however.

The CGI in Monsters are obviously not up to par with the animation of some major blockbusters, but this is to be expected knowing that it was basically created on the directors laptop.   Despite this handicap, Monsters proved itself far superior to the majority of these blockbusters.  The director, Gareth Edwards showed that you don’t need jaw-dropping animation to create jaw-dropping scenes.  All you need is a good script, believable characters, and proper suspenseful buildup.  And a kickass intro/outro doesn’t hurt either.                                                                                                                                                    

3.5/5