Monsters Review

Gareth Edward's film is certainly remarkable.

Made on a shoe-string budget and lacking in a concrete screenplay, he lured two good actors in to roles in a movie he could barely fund and the results are quite honestly breathtaking.


What stands out here is the attention to narrative detail and character. This director knows both how to use silence and also the power of silence in the story and the careful balance between revelation and mystery. Surprisingly early on Edwards shows us the monster, looming in the night vision blackness as iconic as the tripods that swallow humankind in War Of The Worlds. There, for all to see, is a CGI Alien created entirely on a laptop. And it looks great...

Our two main characters are pretty compelling; Whitney Able is beautiful, subtle and gentle; taking in her surroundings in an absorbing fashion and poking fun at Scoot McNairy for relying on tragedy to make himself a living as a Photographic Journalist. He brilliantly points out " you mean like Doctors?". The relationship builds briskly and believeably as the journey moves from the standard to the intriguing, as the relationship between the " monsters" and the military is brought to the foreground. The fantastic thing here is that these aliens are not marauders from Mars but are creatures, stranded in a new world as they follow a loose migratory pattern across the infected zone in South America. The American Army seems to operate a shoot first-ask questions later modus operandi, which seems to cause far more conflict than they may like to admit.

Camera work is jaw-dropping and the film appears quite expensive; easily holding it's own with it's contemporaries and sometimes threatening to eclipse them as it moves on its whimsical, never-distracted gaze with our two main characters. What is clear from Monsters is that Gareth Edwards will be enormous... the next big thing and I, for one, am proud that he is British.

Outside contender for Best Picture at the 83rd Academy Awards- if there's any justice then it should be nominated.