What "Monsters?!"

"MONSTERS" ☆☆ 1/2

So I decided to catch this one, this $15,000 to $500,000 budgeted - depending on whoever worked the books after - indie sci-fi alien movie about a guy and girl who trek from Mexico to get back to America, but through what's known as the alien ground zero, the "infected zone." Obviously, it won't be an easy or safe distance to cut.

Gareth Edwards is the helmer, who wrote/directed/shot and did all of the visual effects, which meant plastering a lot of "DANGEROUS! INFECTED ZONE" and "WATCH OUT! INFECTED ZONE UP AHEAD" and "YOU ARE NOW IN THE INFECTED ZONE!" onto already real street signs. There was also tons of other stuff to put in there, in what are - reportedly - about 250 effects shots. Some destroyed, unmanned and abandoned military vehicles, decapitated homes and villages, a towering electric fence, and a cement wall stretching across the US/Mexico border, a structure of such magnificent size and mile-length it would wrongly inspire the US government to solve illegal immigration. There are also lots of patrolling helicopters which fly by every few minutes. And of course, the aliens; giant squid-like creatures we only see a handful of times in the whole movie.

Shot digitally, completely guerrilla, with a small crew, reportedly, driving around in the same van, from one location to the next, like our two leads in the movie, often lost and unsure of where to go next, and entering without authority, or as in any case without a film permit. With all the hectic filming, this, reportedly, caused most to all of the scenes shot to be improvised. As a result I wouldn't say "Monsters" is a bad movie. No, not entirely. It does what most big-budget stuff should do: concentrate on the human story, concentrate on the characters. In a future already years fostered to aliens who came supposedly as infection on a downed space probe, we have photographer Andrew Kaulder tasked with seeing his boss's soon-to-be-wed daughter, Sam Wynden, safe back into the states. All goes fine and dandy until it doesn't. A train turns around. A scheming ticket clerk unfairly bribes out 5, then 10 grand. An escort party is killed. It's soon then up to Kaulder and Sam to walk the dangerous miles past the border through the infected zone.

Minus a few scenes which I felt resonated enough and were well intentioned, I can't justify the rest of it. There just isn't much going on to care. Not enough story, not enough excitement, or those aliens, to get us involved at all. So Kaulder has a kid back home. So Sam has a fiance. So, to their better judgement, they fall in love. So we had all this rounded character detail - though I would dispense with the falling in love thing. But nothing really happens, or causes us to care much at all, for the first hour of the movie when we should matter what happens to these two once circumstances start to get more drastic. I just didn't care.

(SPOILER ALERT!) I would say after that first alien attack, in one of those scenes that resonated, was indeed good: Kaulder finds a family dead, and while he would take a picture of the mangled bodies, as he says gets paid a good deal of money for them, he instead covers up one dead little girl. And then those last ten minutes: Safe in the US, Kaulder and Sam each make a phone call in an abandoned gas station. He talks to his kid, cries a little, shows his humanity after acting like a reckless loner throughout the movie, and Sam calling her groom-to-be, her speech telling us she just doesn't care anymore. Then some aliens show up, in what I would define as a beautiful moment, when these two things embrace in bond, mirroring our two lovelorn leads. After the aliens depart, Kaulder and Sam kiss, the army shows up to take them home, and just for the hell of it hell breaks loose again. The End. It was nice, but after those 90-odd minutes, I still didn't care enough for them to know if Kaulder and Sam were dead once the credits rolled.

For a movie made as small, shot the way it was, by the one visionary who took the reins to make the whole production a possibility, mirroring a similar small alien occupation movie, "District 9," "Monsters" deserves it's praise. It's impressively done. It looks like more money was spent on it, and those two leads weren't bad, and neither was the supporting who, again reportedly, were recruited. And those affects weren't bad, either. Other than those aliens, which didn't look too organic - and who we should have seen more of, and should have been involved earlier to cause more dilemma for Kaulder and Sam - the other effects were pretty good. That border wall looked majestic. Those helicopers seemed like they were really soaring around on the director's command, and the font on those signs seemed like they've always been there. Oh, the things you could do with computer effects! And most of that (reportedly, reportedly) done on Adobe!

I hear "Skyline," another indie sci-fi alien movie just released, by amateur directors who were also CGI animators, isn't the bet to go over a movie like "Monsters." From what I read, and what I saw in this movie, I would agree. And "Skyline" was shot for somewhere around $500,000, while the effects were done of upwards to 10 million, with the shots rendered ranging around 900! Again, reportedly, reportedly, reportedly... But I'm sure impressed Edwards did his movie without all that dough.

As a side note: I liked the sound design. In the Mexican jungle, when we aren't seeing the aliens, we hear screaming monkeys and squawking birds. Without the aliens around, or at least partially in our peripheral or out yonder snapping trees and screaming a lot of noise, that forest ambience really worked. It reminded me of the first "Jurassic Park," the sound design done to similar effect when the dinosaurs weren't around to chomp on anyone. There was even a scene in "Monsters" where an alien's tentacles search and float around Sam in the gas station shop, similar to that frightening scene where Lex and Tim hide from the raptors in the kitchen in "Jurassic Park," and still similar to other Steven Spielberg movies with kids in danger. In fact, I hear Edwards is Spielberg fan...