The Monster (2016) - Review

The Monster is a movie that I scrolled past on my streaming service several times. Each time I would watch a bit of the trailer that would play and say to myself, “I should watch this at some point,” before moving on. Well, I finally watched more than just the trailer for The Monster and all I can say at the top of this review is that the trailer they chose was the right part to show.

Pros

Puppet, animatronics, and practical effects all look pretty nice
Decent acting from the small cast, considering the script
The sequence in the middle of the movie just before the monster shows up is pretty tense
Ambitious attempt to create a complicated relationship between two characters

Cons

Editing interrupts the tension too much
Monster is shown too much and dispatched too conveniently
Takes 45 minutes for the horror to start
Even though it’s only 90 minutes, it could have been 30 minutes shorter
Conveniences and contrivances abound

Plot & Thoughts

Kathy (Zoe Kazan) is a struggling alcoholic mother who is driving her daughter, Lizzy (Ella Ballentine) to Lizzy’s father’s house. This doesn’t seem like the usual weekend drive to drop her off, however. This seems more like the last time Kathy is going to see Lizzy for a while. That wouldn’t be the reason she’s running about 8 hours late in dropping her off, though. That’s the alcohol’s fault.

Their relationship is clearly strained as Lizzy seems more independent and mature than her mother, for whom she seems to hold a deep disgust. Various flashbacks throughout the movie show the numerous failures of Kathy as a mother and the low points that brought them to such strain and contempt. It’s a drama that is well-acted by both parties, even if the script itself is nothing spectacular.

Oh right, there’s also a monster.

No, it’s not a metaphorical representation of Kathy’s alcoholism like you might expect after a half-hour of drama between the two characters. There’s a literal monster that shows up. Had the trailer not actually shown the silhouette of it, I would have doubted it was actually in the movie for the first 40 minutes. Along the drive, Kathy tries to avoid an animal on the road and ends up wrecking her car and stranding the two of them on the road, in the woods, in the rain. She calls a tow truck and ambulance before either of them notices that something is amiss with the animal that they hit. From the moment they notice something wrong to the moment that the monster claims a victim, there’s some good tension and suspense. The rest of it is a bit like a knockoff of Cujo.

The Monster falls apart in a few ways. It’s trying to tell this emotional story of an alcoholic mother who has failed her daughter again and again and who is trying her best to save their relationship before it ends. While there is certainly some material here to make an emotional movie about the complexity of their relationship, the writing is not strong enough to do it, so a plot device (the monster) is used to quickly resolve it. The two parts of the movie—the drama and the horror—are not working in tandem. If anything, they’re working against each other. To get more info about their relationship, flashbacks are shown and interrupt the horror, eliminating the built-up tension of the moment. The flashbacks themselves aren’t bad and show some depth to both characters, but would be better served in a movie about the two characters and not in this Cujo-Simulator: 2016 Edition.

The extra flashbacks and the tedious pacing for events in the latter portion of the film end up making The Monster feel 30 minutes too long. Not to mention, the monster itself is a bit of a bummer. It’s a simple design that is pretty cool in the dark, and it’s nice to see practical effects in a small movie like this. However, you just end up seeing far too much of it. It starts out pretty ruthless and unstoppable, but then more and more of it is shown, up to the moment it is rather easily dispatched. Perhaps that’s an intentional metaphor by the filmmakers about Lizzy growing up and overcoming her fears, but it ends up making the horror part of the film feel pretty shallow. If that’s the metaphor, I never got the impression that fear was LIzzy’s issue to get over.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

The Monster is yet another example of a movie that has some decent bits and pieces in it that just don’t work together the way they’re supposed to. The drama between the two protagonists is almost compelling and could go some interesting places, but the horror gets in the way. The monster trapping them in the woods would be more effective at eliciting tension if it wasn’t for the drama interrupting it, and the fact that the movie is too proud of its monster to keep it in the shadows. The Monster has some good moments, but it doesn’t make a cohesive story that completes what it sets out to do.

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