Thursday, November 17, 2011

Monsters on Film4

from Wikipedia
So, my first post on my newly renamed blog...

Most of the movies I 'll write about will probably be on Film4. This is one of my favorite channels, it only shows films, mostly independent and some foreign films...with a big Hollywood/blockbuster thrown in every once in a while. Film4 also produces a lot of British films including; 127 Hours, 24 Hour Part People, A Room With a View, The Crying Game, Trainspotting, Attack the Block and many, many more.

Monsters is a British Sci-fi monster movie set in Mexico starring Americans Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able, who were a couple in real life which helped with the onscreen chemistry. The film was directed, written, edited and the visual effects done by Gareth Edwards, who won the '48 Hour Film Contest' at the SCI FI LONDON Film Festival in 2008, who I now happen to volunteer for but not when he won.

One sentence synopsis: A guy and girl have to travel across Mexico to get to the U.S. after a 'monster' infestation.

It reminds me of Let the Right One In a bit because, like that movie it's actually about something else and just happens to have monsters (vampires) in it. Let the Right One In is tecnically a vampire movie but to me it's a social realist movie about a pair of outsiders or 'freaks' who find each other...and one of them just happens to be a vampire. I don't even consider it a horror movie.

Monsters is technically a sci-fi monster movie...but to me it's an indie mumblecore movie about a couple who fall in love whilst on a road trip where shenanigans, good and bad, happen to them...and there just happens to be 'monsters' or creatures as they are called in the film. Take out the monsters and this movie is like 'It Happened One Night', 'The Sure Thing', 'Before Sunrise/Sunset' and 'In Search of a Midnight Kiss' which also starred Scooty McNairy an is actually an inspiration for the Monsters.

The movie has a natural easiness about it due to it's handheld camera and improvised dialogue. It was filmed without premits using the locals as actors and extras. I love movies like this...two of my favorite genres are sci-fi and indie mumblecore films. So, you'd think combining the two wouldn't work but it does. This is a sci-fi monster movie for people who don't like those types of movies.



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