Ultra low budget film about an alternate Earth where NASA accidentally brings a race of giant octopus to Mexico. The film opens with a couple of Humvees rolling into battle with a land walking octopus which appears to be several stories tall. The soldiers spend a lot of time fire machine guns at the monster, which only serve to annoy the tentacle waving beastie. They then call in Air Support and as the bombs drop we lose the picture and shift scene to. . .
A bored photographer and a spoiled little rich girl with an injured arm. For the next couple of hours-at least it felt like a couple of hours-we follow these two as they make their way from Central America through the Forbidden Zone to America. They are surrounded by aliens, but they have apparently grown rather bored by the whole “Creature” topic, as they talk about every other manner of mundane item.
This was not a film that was ruined by too much CGI, there were maybe ten minutes of actual special effects. There was a lot of talking-but very little meaning. There seems to be only one type of Monster who has two or three stages in it’s life-one that feeds on trees, one that lives underwater, and the last one that we see is the giant luminous octopus stage. Our heroes are briefly impressed by monsters, fallen airplanes, and ancient Mayan ruins-but none of these things hold their attention.
There were a lot of red herrings in Monsters-I kept thinking, aha-something is going to happen. Only nothing happened. There was a kind of Cloverfield feel to it, only instead of a video camera that never ran out of film or batteries, we had a digital camera that never ran out of film or batteries. There was also the feel of District 9 as everyone is used to the Monsters and no one really seemed to give a damn about them.
We never find out anything, not about the monsters and not even about our two sappy heroes. This wasn’t an action film, or a romance, it was just kind of there.
Watching the first 3 minutes of Monsters again we see our heroes, such as they are, riding with the soldiers right before there is an explosion. The girl looks dead right away, the reporter is seen a few moments later dragging her lifeless body around and yelling for help. There is a radio static voice over saying there will be ‘collateral damage’ from the strike, but go ahead away.
So these two saps that we have watched trek across The Forbidden Zone were killed in Monsters opening scene. What is the point?
