We are all self-isolating until the foreseeable future, but being inside that long can make anyone crazy. That is why you need plenty of movies to watch. There’s plenty of virus-quarantine themed movies to watch. Contagion seems to be a popular one. There’s Oscar-winning Bong Joon-ho’s The Host and even Cloverfield. Today’s quarantine suggestion is 2010’s Monsters. Garth Edwards has directed 2014’s Godzilla and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, but Monster was his directorial debut. This science-fiction horror movie stars Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able.
The Plot
Monsters takes place during a world where extraterrestrial beings occupy the USA-Mexican border after a NASA ship crash lands between the two countries. As a result, America has built a wall and the northern half of Mexico is quarantined. Both American and Mexican soldier do their best to combat the strange octopus looking creatures, but it’s sometimes to no avail.
Monsters isn’t necessarily a thriller horror movie, but rather an uneasy journey that teeters between a sad and dangerous reality and an attempt at normalcy. McNairy plays a photojournalist named Andrew Kaulder who is tasked with escorting his employer’s daughter Samantha (Able) back to the U.S. border. The journey back is both expensive, almost impossible, and is direr than ever because if they don’t cross, they’ll be stuck in quarantine for six months.
Don’t Expect Too Many Monsters, But The Movie’s Really Good
If you are looking for a film that is going to be non-stop monster action, you won’t get it here. Instead, you almost have a character study film between McNairy and Able’s characters. As I was watching the film, I was thinking to myself that these two had fantastic chemistry with each other. I then remember that Able and McNairy ended up marrying each other afters Monsters, though; they divorced in 2019.
Rating: 3.5/5
Personally, I really ended up enjoying Monsters. I enjoyed watching these two as they saw the best of humanity in a tragedy, as well as the worst. There’s something to really take away from this film. Andrew is a photojournalist and Samantha comments that he makes a profit off of photographing tragedies, Andrew points out that her father’s company pays him for these photos. They pay him nothing for a “happy child”. I think that’s something incredibly poignant to today.
Monsters is a low-budget sci-fi film that benefits on the lack of on-screen monsters. It’s simply knowing the stakes that are at hand that make everything feel series and as if there’s lives on the line. And when the monsters do appear, it’s so infrequent that the CGI doesn’t look awful.
Have you seen Monsters?
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