With a miniscule budget, I have to accept that everything I saw in Monsters, including aged signage in many places warning of the infected zone, military area, danger, and other weathered markings that added to the veracity of the situation were made in a computer. So were the skeletal remains of buildings, towns, fighter jets, military tanks and even dead monsters and humans. I was agog at how on the one hand, this film was shot much like war documentary, and on the other, it looks like a Hollywood production of a war zone to which a lot had to be added to create the appearance of gorgeous, verdant Central American locations.
I was fooled by the authenticity of the look into thinking this was a good movie. It took a second thought, and a third to realize the plot was teetering on insultingly ludicrous absurdity. Yes, a U.S. probe could and probably will one day bring back life from other planets or moons in our very own solar system. And yes, such a craft could easily crash,. exposing microbes to the best environment for life yet found. With water, oxygen and carbon dioxide, sunlight and warmth, any physicist would say this is the luckiest place yet known for life to grow and diversify. These life samples could easily burgeon into anything in a short time, even hundred foot tall, octupus like, land floatintg (an imaginative stretch) monsters. So, I could easily buy the premise -- even that the probe would crash in Mexico, so near Dallas and NASA.
But no one has a cell phone? And the multimillionaire publisher-father of a girl who is stranded in Mexico ( with no plausible reason why she was there in the first place) would simply send a private jet to pick her up. Therefore, no trek through the monster infested jungle with an employee-photographer as protector would take place.. Suspension of disbelief snaps at a certain point -- maybe the glowing organic bulbs on the trees was my last straw. All the great cinematography, attractive stars, cool monsters, and bloody violence against indigenous peoples falls by the wayside when one thinks about all the plot faux pas. I leave unsatisfied and only want to complain over a latte with friends later.
Monsters
Director/Writer/Cinematographer/Visual Effects: Gareth Edwards
Cast: Whitney Able, Scott McNairy
Rated: R
Time: 94 min.
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