I "Loved It" Monsters

Monsters is an amazingly quiet and calm sci-fi road trip movie that is a must see. 

            Monsters is not an extravaganza of action at all, like, there is hardly any; it’s a sci-fi drama. It was compared a lot to District 9, though why I do not know. Yeah, they both involve aliens . . . and that's about where the similarities end. If you felt District 9 had too much action and too much aliens then check out Monsters, a well done and suspenseful sci-fi drama.

            Monsters asks a lot of the audience. You go in knowing there are aliens, you go in expecting aliens, and you don't really get them. I mean, they're there, but the movie is about the people, the couple trying to get across the border. I can see how people think of it as a metaphor for immigration and such, but look hard enough into anything and you’ll find something symbolic, whether it’s really there or not. The whole argument about emigrants isn’t as easy as “they want to cross the border”. There’s economic reasons. I’m pretty sure if the people could, they’d stay at home and work and not opt to try and cross any border illegally for work and money. The people in Monsters want to get back home. I see nothing that makes it a metaphor for people crossing the border illegally. The girl want's to get home and the guy just basically wants her to get home too so that he can be done with her.

            On the way they gotta deal with these large monsters. And that one sentence is about the equivalent of the amount of monsters you’ll see in this movie.

           

            The movie doesn’t need to have monsters all the time, not a lot of special effects or anything like that. A movie called Monsters, however, does rather create the expectation of seeing monsters. It’s hard to blame the advertising because there weren’t a lot of monsters in the preview either, but still, the movie is called Monsters.

            And I say all of this because the movie is a good movie, it’s just that – like my wife (my wife gave up on it after awhile. She really liked District 9 but was bored with Monsters). – people will miss out on this movie because it’s not what they expect. It’s difficult to be in the mood for a Monster movie, sit down and shift gears during the movie. It’s almost an hour into the movie before you get any Monsters, and even then it’s not really much at all. The beginning is great and really hooks you, but again it does more damage than good because the rest of the movie is nothing like the beginning, no gun shots, no crazy camera, pretty much no action. It’s a great opening but it continues the set up for disappointment. Monsters is a great movie, one that many won’t see because they’re expecting monsters through the whole movie, or they won’t stick with because they’re expecting monsters through the whole movie.

            And then the ending. Holy crap the ending of Monsters was like, lean forward in your chair and say: "Wait a minute." The ending is like the whole movie, quiet and calm, but such a holy shit moment. The ending of Monsters doesn't baby you, it doesn't drive into your head an explanation for what’s happening, it just does its thing and hopes you’re smart enough to put two and two together. If you’re not, then fine, the movie ends with no resolution and you probably won’t like it, if you do get it, then the movie ends in a pretty cool way.