Lost identity.. worn out plot

“Monsters” .. walking on the edge between artificiality and thinness

picture

Action and suspense films of the 1990s were known for their cliché opening scenes.

It is a wide sea. We see the camera flying over the water and the names of the film crew appear against the background of the sea water. Then the camera rises to see the far horizon, where we see the constellations if the events are in a city, or we see a car on a winding street in a mountain.

In horror movies, the lonely house on Lake Cliché becomes the lazy writer who doesn't want to renew himself.

In this unflattering, monstrous thriller, Christina Ricci takes on the lion's share of the emotional performance.

In the fifties, we see a single mother named Laura (Ritchie) on the run with her son Cody (Santino Bernard) and settle in an isolated house overlooking a lake.

Laura is a broken and independent woman trying to escape from her past, especially her violent husband.

But what you're running away from is in the house you've rented, an ugly monster.

There are ugly monsters that become beautiful when they become icons, but this monster of ours has not found its way to creativity.

As if his designer was convinced that this was a low-budget movie and made something ugly and meaningless.

Perhaps we would not be surprised if we knew that the name of the company producing the movie was “Chicken Soup for the Soul for Entertainment Businesses”, or it might be a food company that really lost its way and found itself in the cinema!

There is little to say about the frayed and hopelessly spent plot, which doesn't help the viewer much to understand Laura and her seven-year-old son.

But again it's Richie's performance carrying the film with director Chris Sivertson (he directed mediocre films such as All Cheerleaders Die in 2013 and failed films like I Know Who Killed Me in 2007).

And her performance is what makes you want to complete the movie.

revealing secrets

The story of the film increasingly develops through the revelation of secrets that Laura tries to keep, we learn through a phone call that she is trying to avoid Cody's father, and we see through a dream that resembles a scene from the movie "Black Lagoon" in 1954, that Laura is worried about a mysterious woman (Rachel Idlow).

The call and the dream intertwine with Laura's world and the decorations of the fifties that give it a special elegance, especially with the songs of that time.

Laura tries to stay in an emotionally positive atmosphere.

But Cody interrupts that with his frequent nightmares about the lake monster across from the house.

Cody refuses to make friends at school, ignoring his mother's wishes.

Cody's nightmares are elaborate and unconvincing and do not help the viewer emotionally connect with his character, but the film is mainly told from Laura's point of view.

lone energy

Richie's performance is impressive and powerful and reveals a weakness in her character, and this weakness appears even as she reassures her son.

And when the monster appears in front of her, the look of terror on her face exudes more tension than all the movie scenes combined, including the special effects.

No one in the movie lives up to Ritchie's exceptional performance or the energy she puts out.

Bernard's performance is weak, perhaps because he is new and his special moments come whenever the monster appears to him and the latter steals the spotlight from him.

The only other character who can walk parallel to Ritchie is Lenora (Colin Camp).

Ritchie's performance is not supported by any element of the film, especially the plot, which seems to have been left intentionally undeveloped.

Perhaps it is not a coincidence if we know that the name of the character of Laura is similar to the name of Laura Palmer, who is the character of David Lynch in the movie “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” 1992, as “Sivertson” does not hide his influence on Lynch since the first films appeared on the scene.

“I Know Who Killed Me” is closer to “Twin Peaks” than to this movie.

Exactly like the great similarities between David Lynch's 1986 "Blue Velvet" and Brian De Palma's 1980's Dressed to Kill.

But "Monsters" walks on the edge between artificiality and thinness.

The movie's biggest problem is that it doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it about a story from the fifties where we see the decorations are very dominant in the shots, as if the decorations are what elevates the movie.

Or is it about a lake monster that we don't know exactly what its target was and didn't target Cody?

It's nice to see Laura defending herself in the dialogues with Mrs. Langtry (Colin Camp), because Camp herself is a very strong supporting character who has a liveliness similar to or equal to that of Ritchie, imposing a special screen presence and going as far as the director wants her to go.

Camp is an actress with supporting characters who is not assigned starring roles, and for those who do not remember her, her most famous role in the nineties was Detective Connie Kowalski in the famous action movie “Die Hard 3” in 1995, when she helped the hero to evacuate an elementary school from the terrorist trap Simon Gruber.

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Not a strong surprise

There is a illustrative moment in the film when the police interrogate Laura. In this moment in the film, we are minutes away from revealing the surprise of the ending, because the script Laura has laid out for us gradually collapses and is filled with contradictions.

The surprise is not strong and it is cliched and repetitive for the experienced viewer. If we give an example from another movie that contains a similar surprise, we would spoil it, but again Richie's performance saves it.

In the movie - which is a no-nonsense horror - Christina Ricci takes on the lion's share of the emotional performance.

Perhaps we would not be surprised if we knew that the name of the company that produced the movie was “Chicken Soup for the Soul for Entertainment.”

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