Monsters (2010) review: Godzilla Countdown #29-ish

This is the ‘big surprise’ of the Godzilla Countdown. Woo hoo. Yay. Big surprise. Anyway, this isn’t a Godzilla film at all, but it is related to the new movie coming out rather soon. How? Because they both have the same director: Gareth Edwards. This is his first and only other film, as far as I know. It’s an indie film from 2010.

The reviews I read were mostly positive. I like and respect the indie films, so if someone thought this guy was fit to direct Godzilla after just one indie movie, it must be pretty good.

But it was not. It was not good at all. Not kinda good. Not sorta good. Not decent. Not even enjoyably bad. It was just bad. Why was it bad? Because it was so freaking BORING! I can’t express how boring this is! It dragged on for way too long! I feel like if they edited out all the unnecessary scenes, there would be no movie left! But before I get too deep into this, I do have one very important thing to say…

I mean absolutely no disrespect to Gareth Edwards himself. From what I’ve seen, from what everyone else has seen from the trailers and featurettes, it looks like he has handled Godzilla very well! I can’t even tell it’s the same guy who directed this movie! And he put in a lot of time and effort into this first movie of his. The budget was about $500,000! For just $500,000, there was a lot done with it. Most of it looked like it went into making the world the characters travel through, as well as the CG. There is some excellent CG for a movie of this budget, all done by Gareth Edwards himself. He also wrote it, which is where I think the film suffered the most. I have to give respect to the guy for the effort into the effects and the world he tried to create. I just feel so mean bashing this guy’s first film, but I need to do it.

The plot involves some sort of virus that landed on Earth, and it creates huge monster things that terrorize a large portion of Central America. This area is called the infected zone. There’s some photographer guy who has to escort his employer’s daughter to the other side of the infected zone, but things don’t go well.

I do have to give credit to Gareth for setting up the world that the characters have to adventure through. It’s all dark and gritty, everyone has gas masks on, the whole place is run down, there’s a great deal of military influence, and even a giant wall to seal off the area. If Pacific Rim has taught us anything, it’s that walls do not stop monsters from attacking. At all.

As cool as the set up is, the rest of the film is… less so. First off, the acting is lazy. The main guy, whatever his name was, is such a boring actor! He sounds bored, he looks bored, and is lazy in everything he does in this film. Every line of dialogue from this guy sounds like he’s not even trying. The main girl is okay, but there isn’t much to her. She has some issue with her fiance, which gives way to one of the most forced and most poorly written love stories I have ever seen in a movie… but it’s still better than Twilight. ANYTHING is better than Twilight.

I just don’t get how these two fell for each other! Maybe it’s because I haven’t traveled through a giant mutant squid infected zone with a girl I just met and barely know before, but I’m still sure we would just be acquaintances by the end of it. There isn’t much they do that suggests that they like each other, and the chemistry between them seems almost nonexistent.

I’m much more interested in the world they travel through. There’s plenty of scenes where the characters are talking about nothing interesting at all, and there’s a news report in the background. In those scenes, I try to listen to those reports because they actually involve how the world is reacting to these monsters. I want to see the military planning strategies, I want to see the reaction of the general public, I want to see anything but the people the film focuses on!

The main problem is how slow paced everything is. It takes forever for the action scenes to get started, and when you think something’s about to happen, it just turns out to be a false alarm. When they actually DO attack, it still manages to be boring because it focuses way too much on the characters hiding in the back of a van, or something. It never lets the action take off! It tries to be suspenseful way too often for way too long.

When the monsters finally have their whole body shown on screen, what do they do? Attack people? No. Destroy things? No. Eat things? No. They do abso-freaking-lutely nothing. They just stand there and communicate with each other with their tentacles. I was hoping for an action scene in the big finale, but no. They just show up, do… whatever the heck it was they were doing… and leave. Yay. I’m glad I sat through 1 hour and 33 minutes for nothing. I thought it was building up to something at least remotely cool! But there was nothing! And it abruptly ends! I know it’s supposed to make me go “Oh man! That’s it? I want to know what happens!” But instead it made me say, “Thank goodness that’s over!” And to top it all off, the monsters aren’t even that cool looking. They’re giant squids. Wow.

I’ve seen other critics say things like, “People these days can’t respect a slow paced story with great suspense. All they want is big explosions and fast paced action scenes. They don’t care about story or characters at all.”

I CAN respect a slow paced, character driven story, and I know that not every film is going to have super amazing action sequences. But it’s too slow, and 99% of the scenes drag on for too long. The characters are boring as hell, and…. no, wait. Hell is more entertaining than this. Anyway, there’s nothing about these people that makes me care for them. I cared more for the guy at the ticket booth than the main characters!

What I don’t get is how other people seem to like it. I’m not one to put down other people’s opinion on anything, but I’m seriously wondering just HOW they like it. Maybe I’m not seeing something right. I know there was some sort of moral thing the movie was hinting at. I think it was trying to make the audience question who the real ‘monsters’ were, but it just feels forced. Or it was never there to begin with and I’m looking too deep into it.

I guess I didn’t really know what to expect. I went into this film with no real clue as to what it was going to be. I was just curious to see what Gareth Edwards did before Godzilla. As soon as it was over, I was worried about the new Godzilla movie. I didn’t know if I should be excited or cautious with my expectations. But I first saw this movie back before the first trailer for Godzilla showed up last December. As of now, it looks really promising. I’ve gained more hope for it over the course of time. I’ll just have to see if it’s worth the wait.

I wouldn’t bother to see Monsters, though. Good effects, but the bad story, bad acting, bad pacing, and lack of any sort of monsters outweigh any good potential it had. Monsters could really have been a good adventure film, but it was executed so poorly, it’s almost sad. I know that the absence of creatures was supposed to make it seem different from the average monster movie, having a more character driven plot instead of an action based one, but it didn’t work at all. If the writing was better, and the payoff for sitting through all the ‘suspense’ was more satisfying, I would say it’s worth a watch. As it stands, it isn’t.

FINAL RATING: 6 / 50

STORY: 0 / 5

ACTING: 0 / 5

CHARACTERS: 0 / 5

CG EFFECTS: 4 / 5

ACTION: 0 / 5

SOUNDTRACK: 2 / 5

TONE: 0 / 5

ENJOYABILITY: 0 / 5

REWATCH VALUE: 0 / 5

OWNING VALUE: 0 / 5

I feel bad for criticising this film. I know Gareth put a lot of his time and effort into it, and I know the budget wasn’t the greatest, but it was still a bad movie. I feel sort of mean now. I could walk up to Shyamalan, or nearly any other big time Hollywood filmmaker and say “Your movie sucks @$$”, and not feel any remorse, but I’d feel like a total jerk if I had to give my honest opinion on a bad indie film to its maker after all they went through to make it happen. I guess it’s just part of life. Who knows? Maybe Gareth will pull through on Godzilla, since he’s working with a lot more experienced people on it. I hope so.