Refreshingly for a sci-fi movie, Gareth Edwards’ low-budget feature debut Monsters isn’t all panic and mayhem. Set six years after NASA discovered extra terrestrials, life has resumed as normal, with the creatures now quarantined in South America. As always, taxi drivers provide much-needed perspective on the aliens’ occasional rampages, stating calmly “Yeah, it happens every year. We take our chances.” Given our recent political and financial meltdown, Monsters could be viewed as a hopeful message about Ireland’s ability to survive anything, but Edwards clearly has a more familiar political metaphor in mind.
Scoot McNairy (Scoot? Really?) plays Andrew Kaulder, a cynical photographer sent to bring his boss’ daughter Sam (Whitney Able), an unhappily engaged ingénue, home to the United States. But when their passports are stolen, they’re set adrift – and forced to travel through the ‘Infected Zone’ to the huge border wall, designed to prevent the aliens moving from Mexico into the U.S. Along the way the couple stop to gaze pensively at the enforced divide and muse that “it’s different looking at America from the outside in... It’s like we’re imprisoning ourselves.” I would explain the allegory, but I’m dizzy from being hit with that sledgehammer.
Despite the inevitable “Could it be that the real monsters are…us?” epiphany, Monsters is incredibly atmospheric. Gorgeous cinematography captures not only the eerie beauty of lush, desolate landscapes, but also the sense of paranoia these isolated areas invoke – and I do mean paranoia, not terror, as the much-hyped monsters rarely actually appear. Focusing instead on the restrained, believable chemistry between the two leads, Monsters is a slow-paced road-trip romance that happens to feature an alien-related subplot, offering a nice twist to a tired genre.
All told, Monsters is a remarkable achievement for a film made on a budget of $500,000. Edwards is definitely a director to watch (if not hire as our financial regulator).