3 Short Paragraphs: Monsters: Dark Continent

2014, Tom Green (Misfits) -- download

Hmm, I thought I did a ReWatch of the original Monsters, but didn't. So, take Graig's review on the first.  I love the first movie. Its slow, atmospheric and character driven. It takes two characters, not really wanting to be connected, and walks them through the concept of the movie, so we can observe along with them. In this world, microbes from a fallen satellite infect the land with alien life forms, eventually growing into massive kaiju style monsters. The US military has been busy fighting them, and Mexico has become a walled off wasteland. But people live there, doing their best to have normal lives.

The new movie, with little connection to the original, takes us to the Middle East, where the spores of the alien creatures have spread and formed into even more life forms, adapted to the dry deserts. A new war is active, again in a foreign land, replete with insurgents who don't want the American soldiers there, messing up their way of life. The soldiers, more like broken rednecks from all the other Gulf War movies, are there to have fun and kick monster ass. But like in The Walking Dead, its their fellow humans they should be more worried about.

I am hesitant about whether I felt this movie was immersed in the world of monsters, as much as the first one, or just used it as a setting for a tortures of war movie. The movie definitely wants a look & feel, almost documentary style focus on these young, testosterone laden men (look, its Gendry from Game of Thrones) who come out of the devastated, broken land of Detroit and are dropped into the devastated, broken desert. And the monsters are there, overtly so, running along side their humvees or rambling massively in the distance. But I think the schizo feel is what annoyed me the most, despite the two separate elements being done very well.