Monsters. Or District 9: The Boring Version.
But I gotta give this movie credit, it ain't easy to make a beautiful, realistic looking sci-fi movie with a budget of $15,000. This movie looks like a $30 million dollar movie, easy. The only sad thing to this is that Monsters can be summed up in 3 words. Boring & Uneventful.
Monsters takes place in a world 6 after the Earth makes first contact with extraterrestrial life. NASA sent a space probe to Mars to collect alien lifeforms but the probe crashes upon reentry in the Mexican-American border. Now new life forms begin infesting Mexico, prompting the U.S to seal off the border with high walls. And the film follows a journalist who goes to Mexico to escort his bosses really really hot daughter through the infected Mexican zone into the safety of the U.S.
Director Gareth Edwards makes an amazing debut creating an almost Avatar meets Predator-like utopian world where alien and Earth life has fused into a hybrid ecosystem of awesomeness. The cinematography and the visual effects of Monsters is a feast for the eyes. And when you find out the budget Edwards made this movie for, it gains the crew of the film a whole new level of respect.
But ultimately the biggest fault of Monsters was it's incredibly predictable, lazy and mediocre script. If you saw The Crazies, you've seen Monsters. It's your basic survival movie of, "Oh, we need to get out of this infected zone filled with hostile creatures. We gonna power our way through, encounter creatures here and there, lose tonnes and tonnes of friends on the way and end up in safety and realize we love each other." The plot of the movie has been done so many time and done better so many times, it made me not care for the movie as much.
The pacing of the film is really really bad to. Gareth Edwards needs to fire his editor because the film moves hella slow. We spend a good 30 minutes being introduced to the two main characters before we even start the survival journey through the infected zone. And up to then it does get good awhile but the energy drops to an all low when we reach the final 15 minutes of the film.
Out of the two main characters, only Whitney Able stands out. And not because she's hot. But because at the very least, her character is actually trying to do something other than just walk, look intensely into dark places where a creature might be hiding, run and scream. From what I could understand, her character was in Mexico because she wanted to learn more about the alien creatures (an interesting sub-plot that never gets developed any further than the first 10 minutes of the film) A waste really.
I would have liked Monsters better if they didn't focus the whole plot on the survival aspect and delve more into the story of the monsters, what they are, what they want and stuff like that. Monsters is ultimately and pretty looking, one-dimensional, uninspiring film.
But give Gareth Edwards a bigger budget and a better production team. And let the wonderful alien movies flooooow!
RATING: 5/10
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