I didn’t realize until pulling up the IMDB page for
Monsters (2010) that its writer and director, Gareth Edwards, is also the director of the upcoming
Godzilla (2014). And that makes a ton of sense. While
Monsters is hardly
Godzilla-ish in form, it does take what is a painfully small budget for a kaiju film (supposedly $500k) and put it to good use, providing a measured and sometimes look into humanity’s interaction with nature and with himself. In short, where
Cloverfield fell into all the wrong traps,
Monsters simply avoids them in favor of what should have mattered in Abrams’ viral-media monstrosity: the characters.
The plot of Monsters is fairly straight forward. Six years ago, enormous alien creatures arrived on Earth. Everyone believes this is an invasion and quarantines the “infected zones” in hopes of keeping the aliens from taking more territory. Jump ahead to the present: a photojournalist in search of the perfect shot of the enormous creatures is forced by his boss to escort Samantha, the boss’ daughter, out of Mexico to the American border before the next cycle of aggression threatens the quarantine borders. In their struggle to escape, Samantha and Andrew learn about one another’s past: what they’re running from, what they’re running towards, and who they really are in a world that wants them to conform to contradictory identities.

I’d like to take a moment to focus on the last line of my description, because I think one of the points of this film is to question the nature of the title. What does it mean to be a monster? One of the things I had expected from this film, particularly given the locale and the ways in which places south of the American border are typically portrayed, was a sea of humans doing horrifically violent things to one another. In many respects, I think that was a narrative this needed, if not in a direct allegory about “the third world,” then certainly as a commentary on what desperation does to people. But the film never goes there. Instead, it opts for humans betraying one another on a relatively mundane level while the “monsters” are shown to be, as I expected, misunderstood. It also tried to convey a message about the interaction of man and nature, particularly when a group of armed escorts tell Samantha and Andrew how these enormous aliens fit into the new ecosystem — they likewise convince us that we really don’t know what to think about the creatures; thus, we shouldn’t come to any hard conclusions on the matter. When we finally see the creatures, that narrative is already apparent, and the film handles that revelatory moment with a deliberate minimalism: the only ones who seem to have any significant dialogue are the aliens (albeit, it is animalistic and unintelligible to Samantha and Andrew, as well as to us).
That said, I don’t think the narrative about humanity’s “monsters” is given the attention it deserves. While Samantha and Andrew do get screwed over a number of times in this movie, the threat this poses always seems muted by the fact that there’s really no reason for Samantha and Andrew to enter the quarantine zone to escape when they could simply head south (maps in the film suggest this is a possibility). The monstrosity of man, then, is hardly monstrous. It is mundane and largely uninspired. A corrupt ferry worker? A thieving “prostitute”? A thieving and corrupt armed transport system? All here, and all are resolved with uncharacteristic simplicity (or sort of ignored). In effect, the dread these situations should have produced never came to fruition. This isn’t a terribly suspenseful film, even though it needs to be. It’s a numbed film, one which opts for an almost extreme minimalism by the standards of the kaiju format that I think something really does get lost in the translation.
Part of the flaw of the film’s minimalistic approach likewise limits the performances of the lead actors: Scoot McNairy (Andrew) and Whitney Able (Samantha). Overall, their performances are serviceable, but not as emotional as one might expect given a) the situations they’re in throughout the film (the verge of death), and b) the situations they were in before everything went to hell (Samantha and her broken relationship with her fiance; Andrew with his “I’m the father, but I can’t tell him because it would confuse him” scenario). In a weird way, I thought I was watching an anime along the lines of, say, Makoto Shinkai, with minimal, limited performances (The Place Promised in Our Early Days, for example), but what differentiates Shinkai from Monsters is a kind of Hemingway-an iceberg effect, in which the larger plot concerns are made almost secondary to the internal conflicts of the characters and their struggle with how to express it; even with that minimalism, a film like The Place Promised in Our Early Days gives in to the necessity for emotional displays in scenarios where the internal explodes over the external.
Monsters, however, contains so few of these bursting moments that the emotional connection to the world is sometimes lost. Andrew has one incredibly tense scene in which he engages in a phone call with the boy we now know is his son (but who himself thinks Andrew is just a family friend); McNairy loses composure and struggles to keep his voice straight as his body and face contort in agony — the intensity of this scene is notable because it is so separate from the film’s previous performances. Samantha has a similar moment at the sight of several dead bodies, including that of a young child. But everywhere else, it’s as if these characters haven’t entered a certain kind of hell; they seem detached, but without a clear reason for it.
Though I’ve largely criticized the film for many of its important aspects, I will say that in terms of the portrayal of characters over spectacle, Monsters succeeds. These are characters, not caricatures. They have real motivations and flaws, and these are presented evenly throughout the narrative so it is clear that they are supposed to be the real concern, not the critters wandering about in the dark. Though I know Godzilla will be more interested in the spectacle than Monsters, I do appreciate that Edwards saw fit to make a kaiju film that was so invested in the lives of its characters over a weak found footage fetish beset with college kid caricatures.
Monsters also succeeds in its attempts to present a kind of kaiju sensibility. The creatures are mysterious and shown infrequently to maintain that mystery. For a film with such a small budget, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Edwards didn’t feel it necessary to opt for cheaper graphics to put the creatures on the screen for longer periods. If this were a Syfy film, it would have spent half its runtime presenting painfully bad CG renders; instead, Edwards gifts us a simplified portrayal that is both gorgeous and wondrous. One of the ending scenes, in which a lightning storm provides brief flashes of the creatures walking in the dark is one of the most haunting and gorgeous scenes in kaiju cinema — or so I believe.
Likewise, I appreciated Edwards’ use of local color in his work. This easily could have been a film set in some generic U.S. city, but it is instead set and shot in Central America (Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico, to be specific). Though they play fairly small roles, many locals are also part of the film, though I suspect much of this was a matter of budgetary necessity than anything else. Still, the attention to locals, however limited (and, perhaps, concerning), is something to appreciate if only because it’s good to see in a film set just over tomorrow’s horizon. Maybe that’s just me, though…
Overall, though I enjoyed this film a lot more than Cloverfield or the horrendous Godzilla (1998), it is also a flawed work. Would I recommend seeing it? Absolutely. It’s a film that deserves a lot more attention than it received when it first graced the big screen (and the little screen, if I recall correctly) in 2010. When it is on the mark, it is a treat. If anything, I’ll certainly remember it in the years to come.
Directing: 3/5
Cast: 3/5
Writing: 3.5/5
Visuals: 4/5
Adaptation: NA
Overall: 3.375/5 (67.5%)
Inflated Grade: B- (for compelling kaiju style, decent visuals, and solid locations)
Value: $8.00 (based on $10.50 max)
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
Movie Review: Monsters (2010) (A SFF Film Odyssey Selection)
Reading Time
I’d like to take a moment to focus on the last line of my description, because I think one of the points of this film is to question the nature of the title. What does it mean to be a monster? One of the things I had expected from this film, particularly given the locale and the ways in which places south of the American border are typically portrayed, was a sea of humans doing horrifically violent things to one another. In many respects, I think that was a narrative this needed, if not in a direct allegory about “the third world,” then certainly as a commentary on what desperation does to people. But the film never goes there. Instead, it opts for humans betraying one another on a relatively mundane level while the “monsters” are shown to be, as I expected, misunderstood. It also tried to convey a message about the interaction of man and nature, particularly when a group of armed escorts tell Samantha and Andrew how these enormous aliens fit into the new ecosystem — they likewise convince us that we really don’t know what to think about the creatures; thus, we shouldn’t come to any hard conclusions on the matter. When we finally see the creatures, that narrative is already apparent, and the film handles that revelatory moment with a deliberate minimalism: the only ones who seem to have any significant dialogue are the aliens (albeit, it is animalistic and unintelligible to Samantha and Andrew, as well as to us).
That said, I don’t think the narrative about humanity’s “monsters” is given the attention it deserves. While Samantha and Andrew do get screwed over a number of times in this movie, the threat this poses always seems muted by the fact that there’s really no reason for Samantha and Andrew to enter the quarantine zone to escape when they could simply head south (maps in the film suggest this is a possibility). The monstrosity of man, then, is hardly monstrous. It is mundane and largely uninspired. A corrupt ferry worker? A thieving “prostitute”? A thieving and corrupt armed transport system? All here, and all are resolved with uncharacteristic simplicity (or sort of ignored). In effect, the dread these situations should have produced never came to fruition. This isn’t a terribly suspenseful film, even though it needs to be. It’s a numbed film, one which opts for an almost extreme minimalism by the standards of the kaiju format that I think something really does get lost in the translation.
Part of the flaw of the film’s minimalistic approach likewise limits the performances of the lead actors: Scoot McNairy (Andrew) and Whitney Able (Samantha). Overall, their performances are serviceable, but not as emotional as one might expect given a) the situations they’re in throughout the film (the verge of death), and b) the situations they were in before everything went to hell (Samantha and her broken relationship with her fiance; Andrew with his “I’m the father, but I can’t tell him because it would confuse him” scenario). In a weird way, I thought I was watching an anime along the lines of, say, Makoto Shinkai, with minimal, limited performances (The Place Promised in Our Early Days, for example), but what differentiates Shinkai from Monsters is a kind of Hemingway-an iceberg effect, in which the larger plot concerns are made almost secondary to the internal conflicts of the characters and their struggle with how to express it; even with that minimalism, a film like The Place Promised in Our Early Days gives in to the necessity for emotional displays in scenarios where the internal explodes over the external.
Monsters, however, contains so few of these bursting moments that the emotional connection to the world is sometimes lost. Andrew has one incredibly tense scene in which he engages in a phone call with the boy we now know is his son (but who himself thinks Andrew is just a family friend); McNairy loses composure and struggles to keep his voice straight as his body and face contort in agony — the intensity of this scene is notable because it is so separate from the film’s previous performances. Samantha has a similar moment at the sight of several dead bodies, including that of a young child. But everywhere else, it’s as if these characters haven’t entered a certain kind of hell; they seem detached, but without a clear reason for it.
Though I’ve largely criticized the film for many of its important aspects, I will say that in terms of the portrayal of characters over spectacle, Monsters succeeds. These are characters, not caricatures. They have real motivations and flaws, and these are presented evenly throughout the narrative so it is clear that they are supposed to be the real concern, not the critters wandering about in the dark. Though I know Godzilla will be more interested in the spectacle than Monsters, I do appreciate that Edwards saw fit to make a kaiju film that was so invested in the lives of its characters over a weak found footage fetish beset with college kid caricatures.
Monsters also succeeds in its attempts to present a kind of kaiju sensibility. The creatures are mysterious and shown infrequently to maintain that mystery. For a film with such a small budget, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Edwards didn’t feel it necessary to opt for cheaper graphics to put the creatures on the screen for longer periods. If this were a Syfy film, it would have spent half its runtime presenting painfully bad CG renders; instead, Edwards gifts us a simplified portrayal that is both gorgeous and wondrous. One of the ending scenes, in which a lightning storm provides brief flashes of the creatures walking in the dark is one of the most haunting and gorgeous scenes in kaiju cinema — or so I believe.
Likewise, I appreciated Edwards’ use of local color in his work. This easily could have been a film set in some generic U.S. city, but it is instead set and shot in Central America (Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico, to be specific). Though they play fairly small roles, many locals are also part of the film, though I suspect much of this was a matter of budgetary necessity than anything else. Still, the attention to locals, however limited (and, perhaps, concerning), is something to appreciate if only because it’s good to see in a film set just over tomorrow’s horizon. Maybe that’s just me, though…
Overall, though I enjoyed this film a lot more than Cloverfield or the horrendous Godzilla (1998), it is also a flawed work. Would I recommend seeing it? Absolutely. It’s a film that deserves a lot more attention than it received when it first graced the big screen (and the little screen, if I recall correctly) in 2010. When it is on the mark, it is a treat. If anything, I’ll certainly remember it in the years to come.
Directing: 3/5
Cast: 3/5
Writing: 3.5/5
Visuals: 4/5
Adaptation: NA
Overall: 3.375/5 (67.5%)
Inflated Grade: B- (for compelling kaiju style, decent visuals, and solid locations)
Value: $8.00 (based on $10.50 max)
Share this:
Like this:
Related
Shaun Duke
Follow Me
Newsletter
Support Me
Recent Posts
A Reading List of Dystopian Fiction and Relevant Texts (Apropos of Nothing in Particular)
Why would someone make a list of important and interesting works of dystopian fiction? Or a suggested reading list of works that are relevant to those dystopian works? There is absolutely no reason other than raw interest. There’s nothing going on to compel this. There is nothing in particular one making such a list would hope you’d learn. The lists below are not an exhaustive list. There are bound to be texts I have forgotten or texts you think folks should read that are not listed. Feel free to make your own list and tell me about it OR leave a comment. I’ll add things I’ve missed! Anywhoodles. Here goes:
Share this:
Like this:
Duke’s Best EDM Tracks of 2024
And so it came to pass that I finished up my annual Best of EDM [Insert Year Here] lists. I used to do these on Spotify before switching to Tidal, and I continued doing them on Tidal because I listen to an absurd amount of EDM and like keeping track of the tunes I love the most. Below, you will find a Tidal playlist that should be public. You can listen to the first 50 tracks right here, but the full playlist is available on Tidal proper (which has a free version just like Spotify does). For whatever reason, the embedded playlist breaks the page, and so I’ve opted to link to it here and at the bottom of this post. Embeds are weird. Or you can pull songs into your preferred listening app. It’s up to you. Some caveats before we begin:
Share this:
Like this:
2025: The Year of Something
We’re nine days into 2025, and it’s already full of exhausting levels of controversy before we’ve even had a turnover in power in my home country of the United States. We’ve seen resignations of world leaders, wars continuing and getting worse and worse (you know where), the owner of Twitter continuing his tirade of lunacy and demonstrating why the billionaire class is not to be revered, California ablaze with a horrendous and large wildfire, right wing thinktanks developing plans to out and attack Wikipedia editors as any fascist-friendly organization would do, Meta rolling out and rolling back GenAI profiles on its platforms, and, just yesterday, the same Meta announcing sweeping changes to its moderation policies that, in a charitable reading, encourage hate-based harassment and abuse of vulnerable populations, promotion and support for disinformation, and other problems, all of which are so profound that people are talking about a mass exodus from the platform to…somewhere. It’s that last thing that brings me back to the blog today. Since the takeover at Twitter, social networks have been in a state of chaos. Platforms have risen and fallen — or only risen so much — and nothing I would call stability has formed. Years ago, I (and many others far more popular than me) remarked that we’ve ceded the territory of self-owned or small-scale third party spaces for massive third party platforms where we have minimal to no control or say and which can be stripped away in a tech-scale heartbeat. By putting all our ducks into a bin of unstable chaos, we’re also expending our time and energy on something that won’t last, requiring us to expend more time and energy finding alternatives, rebuilding communities, and then repeating the process again. In the present environment, that’s impossible to ignore.1 This is all rather reductive, but this post is not the place to talk about all the ways that social networks have impacted control over our own spaces and narratives. Another time, perhaps. I similarly don’t have space to talk about the fact that some of the platforms we currently have, however functional they may be, have placed many of us in a moral quagmire, as in the case of Meta’s recent moderation changes. Another time… ↩
Share this:
Like this:
Categories