A romantic road movie. With giant rampaging space octopuses.
If you’ve heard anything about Monsters you will know that it was made with a crew of two men and a monkey armed with a pinhole camera and an Etch A Sketch. The reason coverage (and marketing) are harping on about the opportunistic guerrilla filmmaking and bedroom CGI is because the end result looks seriously impressive.
The megamolluscs are cool(ish) but the especially evil devil is in the detail, with landscapes manipulated to such a degree it is hard to tell what was caught through a lens and what was painted with a computer. Gareth Edwards, with his background in visual effects, has done good. But, as writer-director, can he actually spin a yarn as well as lighting a few fireworks? Better than you might expect. The monster madness is held back while the characters’ relationship is carefully built and is the primary focus. This will no doubt piss off those expecting a more “conventional” monster movie, as will the ending, and perhaps it could do with a little more action. But this is a film with heart and is an exciting vision of low budget effects movies of the future.
1st Dec 2010 | Official site | On IMDb
