The Squids Are All Right

Every once in a while a movie comes along where the actual story seems to get almost overshadowed by the story-behind-the-story: the ‘making of’ is rather more unusual than the plot. Normally these are big-budget, studio productions: it happens a lot with Jim Cameron movies, simply because of their scale and technical innovation, it happened with Lord of the Rings because the shoot was an epic in its own right (the same with Apocalypse Now), and there seems to me to be an attempt in progress to do the same with the Tron sequel on the strength of its CGI-rejuvenation of Jeff Bridges (presented as something wholly new and groundbreaking despite the fact that this sort of thing has been happening for nearly five years on a smaller scale).

At the low-budget end of the scale we have The Blair Witch Project (a film I haven’t seen since it came out, partly because I suspect it won’t be as scary as I remember, partly because I’m afraid it will) and now Monsters, written, directed, and just-about-everything-elsed by Gareth Edwards (a change of pace after all those appearances as scrum-half for Wales, but it’s nice to see him trying something new). The story – rapidly assuming the status of legend – behind this film is that Edwards, the two lead actors, and a handful of others toured Mexico and Central America in a van, basically filming whatever they saw, then came home and somehow edited a movie out of the footage. So far, so experimental, but what makes Monsters unusual is that this isn’t some indie relationship drama but a piece of genuine epic SF.

Monsters has drawn a lot of comparisons with things like Cloverfield and Skyline. It is the story of photo-journalist Kaulder (Scoot McNairy), who’s ordered to escort his boss’s daughter Sam (Whitney Able – who, if Wikipedia is to be believed, is about fifteen years older than she looks) home to the USA from Mexico. The only problem with this is that, since an accident with a space probe some years before, the north of the country has been quarantined. It is now home to gigantic molluscine creatures who the armed forces of Mexico and the States are fighting a desperate (and losing) battle to contain – and, unfortunately, it looks like going through this area is the only way for Kaulder to complete his mission…

Well, like Cloverfield this could be said to be a new take on the monster movie genre, and like Skyline it’s a low-budget movie that still manages to incorporate first-rate special effects. Unlike either of them, however, it exudes intelligence and atmosphere throughout. Oddly, there’s a very real sense in which Monsters is not really a monster movie. The creatures themselves get very little direct screen time (when they do eventually appear, they are stunning) and the film is much more about the way the world has changed since their appearance.

The world of Monsters is utterly convincing and in many ways strangely familiar: one can imagine life going on as normal throughout most of the world, with occasional mentions of the situation buried deep inside news bulletins as people just get on with their lives. Edwards inserts fake news bulletins, sign-posts, and other things throughout, most of which the two leads pretty much ignore. This is a road movie, in an odd way, and having travelled a bit in various parts of the developing world, the details of the journey here gave me some smiles of recognition. The naturalistic feel given to an ostensibly very strange situation reminded me very much of the opening sections of 28 Days Later…, which I would say is the film this really reminded me of most.

Can you tell what it is yet?

At the heart of the film is the relationship between Kaulder and Sam. Like everything else it’s rather understated and left to the audience to judge for themselves, most of the time at least. But there is an obvious chemistry between the two who apparently have since got hitched (no doubt Gareth Edwards officiated at the ceremony, took the photos and made the wedding-cake).

I fear this is turning into a list of the things Monsters is and isn’t: it’s not a monster movie, it’s not action-packed, it’s thoughtful and moving and convincing… bleah. In an odd way it covers so many bases it transcends the idea of genre entirely. It’s a genuine one-off (or so one hopes – I hope Edwards retained the sequel rights) but a superbly accomplished one. The legend of the making of Monsters is a remarkable story in its own right, but that shouldn’t distract one too much from the one on the screen: a unique and rather beautiful movie that’s not quite like anything I’ve ever seen before. Quite possibly the best film of the year.