Monsters
starring Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able
written and directed by Gareth Edwards
Rating: ♦◊◊◊◊
What kind of name is“Scott”? Anyway, this is an alien movie. A lot is left unexplained. A NASA probe returning to earth from space crashes in northern Mexicoand the entire area, including southern border states become infected with alien xenomorphs, life forms. Not much attention is paid to the aliens. The U.S. Air Force flies by every so often bombing in the distance, but the story itself has little to do with aliens. It’s not an alien invasion story. It’s a quest to return home from South America by two Americans, one a photo journalist and the other the daughter of a media businessman. 99% of the film is a two-actor show. I was hoping for a real monster movie and to be scared, like War of the Worlds, or something. Instead the monsters were almost metaphorical. The real monsters were fairly marginal to the plot. In fact, the story could be a commentary on conservative ideological U.S. reaction illegal immigration (“illegal aliens”) and undocumented workers. It features a quarantine zone fence and a King Kong-like border wall to keep out the aliens that we practically never see. My favorite line,
“It’s different looking at Americaform the outside in. Just sitting right outside and looking in.” How true. That’s why international travel is so educational.”
When the two finally do manage to cross the border and arrive back in the U.S. they find everyplace deserted. Apparently the aliens have spread farther than was let on by the government. Or, the effort to contain them is utterly failing. “Let’s just keep going. There’s gotta be somebody somewhere” is the desperate hope from disaster movies I’ve been hearing every since Charlton Heston realized in Planet of the Apes that he was still on planet Earth.
There were some great shots of Latin America.