MONSTERS
Written & Directed by Gareth Edwards
Produced by Allan Niblo & James Richardson
Released by Magnet Releasing
UK. 94 min. Not Rated
With Scoot McNairy & Whitney Able
 

Early buzz suggested Monsters would be this year’s District 9, a brainy, believable, politically canny riff on human-alien coexistence. It’s not. Unlike last year’s hit, whose rather uncomfortable, slippery politics added heft to what was otherwise a competent sci-fi shoot-’em-up, Monsters sags under the weight of its half-baked ideas.

Set in an alternate world, Monsters takes place after a space probe returning from one of Jupiter’s moons crashes in Mexico. The probe carries some unwelcome guests, like furniture found on a New York City curb, in this case alien spores, which drift into the ocean where they grow into giant, eight-story-tall squid-like creatures with seasonal migratory patterns and an appetite for destruction.

Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy), an emo-haired newspaper photographer, is on assignment in Mexico, hoping to snap a photo of a beastie he can put on the front page. Alas for his ambitions, his boss strong-arms him into escorting Sam Wynden (Whitney Able), his wayward, pixie-haired daughter, back to the U.S. But the growing number and restlessness of the squids has led the mean old U.S. government to enforce a temporary travel ban. So to avoid getting stranded for six months, the couple decides to make the dangerous trek through the “Infected Zone,” a depopulated no-man’s land in northern Mexico where the creatures live and breed, and which the U.S. military occasionally bombs to keep the critters from overtaking a newly built wall that straddles the border.

Various implausibilities—why can’t they fly on to a third country and back to America?—chip away at a movie that prides itself on a documentary-style realism. But the central plot, a sort of road-trip romcom, needs to flog along. You see, at first the two indie muppets don’t cotton on—she’s engaged to an (always offscreen) fiancée, whom her father wants her to marry. And he’s a womanizing prole with a child he never sees. Have no fear. Nothing brings two young people together like being led by sketchy, armed mercenaries through Mexican jungles tainted by chemical warfare and home to man-eating creatures from outer space. For all that, the actors, a real-life couple largely improvising their dialogue, develop a believable, familiar rhythm.

Of course, this is not just a movie about aliens, or rather, not the tentacled kind. Evidence slowly builds that the beasties are peaceful until spooked by fighter planes, and the real problem could be civilian deaths from U.S. bombs. Frequently shown mock CNN footage, in queasy green night vision, of firefights between U.S. forces and the squids helps sketch a popular leftist vision—an America that creates war zones abroad and then tries to fortify itself against the troubles of the world it helps stir up. So is it a spoiler if I tell you the border wall doesn’t hold? It does, however, provide a setting for two of the movie’s best unintentional laughs when Kaulder groans, on seeing the wall—“It’s like I don’t even recognize America anymore!”—and later when he and Sam take shelter for the night in an incongruous Aztec temple.

British filmmaker Gareth Edwards—a one-man show, writing, directing, shooting, and even working up all the special effects on the tiniest of budgets—is mind-bogglingly talented. The film impresses on a technical level, and despite the occasional hiccup, he convincingly conveys the new normalcy of living under the threat of giant squid attacks. But ultimately, it all fails to cohere. After all, the film’s big climactic showdown is, essentially, a mating dance. Godzilla 1985 peddled the same message, “Man is the real monster,” but at least it ends with an exploding volcano. Brendon Nafziger
November 5, 2010