Monsters review

[alobear]

Monsters is an odd beast, as films go.

I found myself contaminated by the views expressed in the Empire review, which I read before going to see the film, and I wonder if my response to it would have been different if I'd gone in with no prior knowledge or supposition.

I think I would describe the film as oddly uneventful, but affecting nonetheless.

Obviously, things *do* happen, and there are in fact multiple casualties during the protagonists' journey through the infected zone, but the 12A rating forces distancing from the violence, and the semi-improvised dialogue results in scenes that have the realism and occasional banality of a documentary rather than the staged importance and unsubtle emphasis of event fiction.

The film would have been very different in the directorial and budgetary hands of Michael Bay, for example.

That's not to say that it would have been better as a blockbuster - on the contrary, I was drawn in by the smallness of the story that was told, and I found the two main characters believable and appealing enough to care about what happened to them.  There is a great deal of simple beauty and unspoken depth in the film, and the almost entirely silent (and pointedly undocumented) climax provides a telling commentary on the wider picture of the film's premise, emphasised still further by the noise and abruptness of the very last moments.

Initially, I was thrown by where and how the filmmakers chose to end their story - it seemed cut off prematurely - but I now think the absence of an extended coda was in fact the right thing to do.  It allowed the encapsulation of the protagonists' experience within the immediate environment of their journey and meant that their final encounter with the creatures remained unsullied by the inevitable messiness and mundanity of their continuing lives back inside the American Wall.

The film has certainly provoked more thought than my usual trips to the cinema, and I'm glad I went, as I was apprehensive about the violence and potential scares initially and those fears proved entirely unfounded.  I also think extended consideration of the film's meaning and impact has produced a better review than I have habitually written of late, which is something else to think about in the future.