movie film review | chris tookey
 
     
     
 

Monsters

 (12A)
© Magnolia Pictures - all rights reserved
     
  Monsters Review
Tookey's Rating
6 /10
 
Average Rating
6.62 /10
 
Starring
Andrew - Scoot McNairy, Samantha - Whitney Able
Full Cast >
 

Directed by: Gareth Edwards
Written by: Gareth Edwards

 
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Released: 2010
   
Genre: MONSTER
SCIENCE FICTION
ROMANCE
THRILLER
   
Origin: UK
   
Colour: C
   
Length: 93
 
 


 
Tiny but encouraging.
Reviewed by Chris Tookey



Monsters is a sci-fi film which performs wonders on a miniscule budget and is a fine advertisement for the directing skills of a new British writer-director, Gareth Edwards.

It doesn’t deliver scares, spectacle or monster mayhem on the scale of a blockbuster, but the atmosphere of menace is skilfully conveyed, and the climax is a mini-triumph.

Mr Edwards’ writing skills aren’t yet as developed as his directing talents. The premise – a self-centred photographer (Scoot McNairy) becomes humanised and falls in love with his boss’s daughter (Whitney Able) as he helps her across an area of Mexico “infected” with aliens – owes a little too much to Frank Capra’s It happened One Night.

The young couple aren’t all that interesting or sympathetically written; nor do the actors have much chemistry, though off-screen they have since married.

The film’s message – that aliens may not be unlike us, and the true monsters are often human – is a shade over-familiar, and was more cogently expressed in the recent District 9.

So don’t expect a blockbuster, or an artistic masterpiece. All the same, Monsters is well worth seeing if you want to watch the first steps of a director who deserves to go far.


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