Monsters (2010)

Six years after Earth has suffered an alien invasion a cynical journalist agrees to escort a shaken American tourist through an infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border.

Over the past couple of months I have had a lot of people ask me to recommend horror movies that are "not that gory". Now, I am not going to get into the semantics of what makes a movie a horror over a thriller; as far as I am concerned there is a huge grey area, but if you are fighting for your life and there is some blood involved, chances are its a horror. Unless, like, it's a war movie.

Anyways, now when I watch films, I try to think of those people so I can recommend great little horror flicks that are "not too gory" but still tell a good story. Well, if you are one of those people, Monsters is for you.

I was quite excited when I got Monsters.

It is written and directed by Gareth Edwards who also did the cinemtography, visual effects and the production design in this film which is also his first feature. But what made me excited (other than the fact that part of Mexico is in qurantine and there are fucking MONSTERS in it) is that the film was produced by Vertigo Films which also had a hand in Shrooms, another one of my top horror films.

The story is about a photographer who must get his boss' daughter out of Mexico and back to the United States before the Monster season starts. Now of course there are some problems which lead them to trekking across the infected zone in a desperate attempt to get to the "wall" before they are attacked by monsters.

Now, I tend to "test" horror films before I subject my boyfriend to them just because I know all it takes is a damn good synopsis and dvd cover to make any film look good to me. When I "tested" The Possession of David O'Reilly, I watched about 40 minutes of it before I decided that he would like to watch it as well. Monsters took 1 minute. The damn opening credits weren't even over.

I really want to compare this movie to Cloverfield but its not really like Cloverfield. Cloverfield had a much bigger budget so they can afford a lot of crazy shit and special effects. Monsters is like Cloverfield's little brother. The "monsters" in it are freaking phenemonal but there are no crazy impale scenes or anything like that, which really is the only thing that gives you a hint at the low budget of this film. In fact, I would have to say that there was no gore in the film and I don't paticularly remember any scenes with a lot of blood, which is why this film may not appeal to all horror fans. But if you appreciate a good little story and believe there needs to be more walking octopii in the world (but not literally because thats what happened to fucking Mexico), then this is the film for you.

My only real problem with the film is that I want to know more about the monsters. I mean, like sure, they kind of explain it when they show you the alien trees, but I didn't quite understand how they went from aliens trees to gigantic walking octopii and I kept waiting to find out the rest of the story. But I guess if anything, that means there is definitely the material there for a sequel.

Overall, I enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it to anyone who was interested in a horror movie that isn't gory but still awesome.