Watched "Monsters" on demand and wasnt impressed!

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moviemaykr

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As most of you know "Monsters" is the indie low budget film shot on the Sony EX3 with a Letus Adapter. It was made with a skeleton crew and a micro budget. Thats the good news, The bad news is the story is weak and has been done a thousand times which is masked by the anticipation of seeing a story that involves possible monsters that they have to battle or go through to get to safety!
Its a LOVE story with some impressive graphic work due the fact thats the directors main gig in the past as a graphics guy. The graphics were the best part of the movie how he added things that weren't there when he shot the scenes.
The monsters are very weak and sometimes the image is soooo dark you cant see them hardly at all. This is due to the fact he had no budget for a lighting crew or even the use creatively of some light panels or florescent camping lights would have helped the images a ton!
On top of that the main 2 characters are never in danger and this is obviously done because the director didnt have a budget for true stunt actors. I was excited to watch this movie with my girlfriend who works on major action feature films and we both after watching it felt it would be easily forgotten. She thought the dialogue was boring and a lot of the situations were very convenient. We watched with an open mind but in the end could not keep giving the movie a free pass because it was done on such a small budget and cast.
I will say the director did a great job of using what he had available and kudos to him for getting this movie sold after it aired at a popular film festival. I think it was a bad idea to release it on Sony Playstation and other on demand outlets a month before it comes out onto the big-screen. Yes they did get my $12.95 and I gladly paid it, but I would have $23 for 2 tickets a month later to see it on the big-screen. Instead my girlfriend and I watched it for $6.50 each and glad we didnt spend anymore than we did.
Once again Im very impressed by the director and casts effort but the end result is the movie is very lacking and I wonder if Bret Rattner thought by buying this that it would be his "District 9". Sorry but its nowhere near "District 9". I am happy though that this director will help pave the way for studio executives in Hollywood to be more acceptable of films coming out that arn't shot on film.
 
I gave it a solid B, thought it was pretty cool. (I saw it before I found it cost $15k to make, I assumed it was in the $.5 - 4 Mil. range)

Yes, there were about 4 times I thought "here comes the big monster attack" - it finally becomes apparent this is more about the characters. - it's not "war of the Worlds", nor is it intended to be.

I have to hand it to the guy - regardless of budget, he tried to do a "people thrown together/road movie" that happened to take place in a country dealing with a 6-years on monster invasion.

Flick has an indie/foreign vibe, soundtrack and style across the board. Saw it on ATT/Uverse Digital cable and had no issues with darkness/etc, thought the imagery was 85% "really pretty" and the rest acceptable to above average. Effects never looked cheap to me.

Overall I thought it was refreshing; never built up massive danger/suspense, but that didn't feel "budget" to me, more like the director was messing with expectations.

Previous poster says "the main 2 characters are never in danger and this is obviously done because the director didnt have a budget for true stunt actors" Ummm... danger or a sense of supsense really has nothing to do with stunts (or "stunt actors"?); the scene where the monsters sent all the trucks flying into the trees did have my wife going "get out of the damn truck!" - and I guess about 6 of the cast ended up in pieces after that.

This flick will most definitely divide audiences; there's really no way to "sell" it with a poster or trailer; the real climax of the flick is a main character who is estranged from his toddler son, witnesses the death of a child, which emotionally breaks his defenses down. Did that leave us in tears as a master could have done? No, but hey - when was the last time you could use a sentence like the above description to describe the climax of a scifi/monster flick, or even see a special effects-heavy movie where the primary emphasis of the story was character, not action or effects? Throw in a very nicely handled subtext regarding immigration - two Americans being smuggled through "infected" Mexico towards a giant concrete monster-proof wall? Maybe not the most subtle thing, but the script left it at that - no preaching, no overblown speeches (the above poster didn't pick up on that so my guess is it's not seen as heavy handed) - but a really great mix of imagery that supports a mirror-view of the immigration debate, and I find it odd that "serious" film review sites weren't thrilled to report a fairly deft use of allegory. You could argue the entire flick was clever social satire.

That alone put a big smile on my face - maybe I wouldn't have thought that when I was 12, but man, it was refreshing. And regardless of budget: as a genre fan this strikes me as one of the more important flicks to come out of the post-DVX era; especially since it was never marketed to me as a "great for the budget" film; the genre press is touting it as a good movie.
 
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