Monsters is the kind of movie tailor made for a cult audience, the sort of film you'll kick yourself for not seeing sooner. While it will never attain the same level of awareness of District 9, its audience will only continue to grow as years go by. It's one of those deep cut sci-fi films you pull out to impress your less movie-literate friends. Endlessly inventive and visually arresting, it is all the more impressive for what it is able to accomplish with its minuscule budget and limited production crew. With scenes of pure suspense and unexpected beauty, Monsters is Spielberg on a micro budget.Monsters follows a photographer named Andrew (Scoot McNairy) as he tries to transport his boss's daughter Sam (Whitney Able) out of Mexico and back home to America. Easy enough, if it weren't for all those 100 foot aliens that crash landed in Northern Mexico six years ago. Together, Andrew and Sam make their way North through the "Infected Zone," hoping they'll make it back to America in one piece. Director Gareth Edwards has an extensive background in visual effects, and he puts it to great use here. The titular monsters, like giant land locked octopuses, are a sight to behold. Edwards, knowing his budgetary limits, keeps the creatures hidden for much of the film. For some audience members, this might be frustrating, but for those with patience, it makes the film all the more rewarding in the end. People never complain that the aliens in Close Encounters don't show up until the end, and to show the aliens here would severely undermine what Edwards ultimately reveals about the aliens in the film. There's something to be said about a subtle monster movie.
While the monsters are seen sparingly through the film, their presence still looms over everything else. There is constant tension that something lethal could happen at any moment, and the visual style of the film reflects a world in which giant aliens have taken over. Shot entirely on location in Mexico, the film takes advantage of hurricane devastated locations to impress upon the audience what kind of world the characters now exist in. And the performances are all informed by their shared history of six years of alien infestation. Some characters use the aliens as a way to make money from desperate travelers, others see the aliens as something almost religious. Just because the monsters are elusive doesn't mean they aren't the dominant force in this movie.
The two central performances work well in an understated way. Scoot McNairy plays Andrew as a man worn down by the world. He recognizes the inherent absurdity of his job, noting that he will make more money if he photographs a child killed by a monster than if he photographs a child smiling. Whitney Able takes what could have been a spoiled heiress character and infuses her with a basic humanity that makes Sam a fun character to be around. And the two (who are a real life couple) have a strong chemistry that helps carry the movie during scenes where the two are simply trekking across Mexican wilderness. It is a true testament to these performances that as the end approached I was sincerely bothered by the idea that there was a very good chance that neither character would survive the film. I simply enjoyed being in the presence of these two people for an hour and a half, which isn't something a lot of films can pull off.
A film like Monsters isn't going to work for people looking for the next Cloverfield. It's about characters, it's about a very detailed setting, and it's ultimately about the idea that what we think we know about something isn't always true. The film ends on an ambiguous and strangely stunning moment that ranks as one of my favorite scenes in a movie this year. What that scene, and indeed the whole film, says about the way people look at the world around them is interesting and moving. At its heart, Monsters is a movie about the beauty of relationships, in more ways than you might expect.
