Gareth Edwards, “Monsters”, Vertigo Films (2010)
Some time in the not too distant future, a NASA space probe has gone and collected some alien life-forms from one of those recently discovered giant exoplanets orbiting various stars hundreds of light years away. On its way back the probe crash-lands in northern Mexico and the life-forms, surviving the blast and the hit of oxygen and other unfamiliar gases, escape and proliferate. Six years after that terrible event, an entire area of several million square kilometres along the border with the United States has been declared an Infected Zone: that is, it’s infected with giant squid and octopus aliens with long skinny insect legs to walk on land and huge tentacles to throw tow-trucks and fighter jets around for ballgame practice. Cities in the Zone are left abandoned, buildings and highways are left in ruins and only the very poor who cannot escape scrape whatever existence they can from the land. Just how much fun these cephalopods get up to is demonstrated early on when we see on night vision a US army convoy, complete with a soldier singing Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”, run into one such creature: there’s an explosion, a tank is damaged, a man starts screaming for help and attempts to drag a woman off the road away from the enraged beast. Soldiers rescue the woman but leave the man behind to suffer a horrible death.
The bulk of the film is a road movie about two mismatched people, Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) and Samantha Windon (Whitney Able), thrown together by Kaulder’s unseen magazine employer. Kaulder has come down to Mexico on an assignment to do a story on the aliens and their effect on the local people when he gets a call to escort the boss’s daughter back to the US. He finds her and initially their train journey goes smoothly – until the train driver is told to stop and turn back. Kaulder and Samantha leave the train and hitch-hike down to the coast where they try to catch the morning ferry. Unfortunately they lose their passports and the ferry leaves; the only remaining option is for them to go through the Infected Zone with an armed guard escort to the border.
The two are determined not to speak to each other, Kaulder angry at having to “baby-sit” the boss’s daughter, but they bond together enough that, down at the coast when he discovers she’s not interested in him and is engaged to someone else who she seems uninterested in, he ends up getting drunk and in bed with a prostitute who later steals the passports. The prostitute is able to take the documents and Kaulder’s cash because when Sam sees her with Kaulder, Sam runs away as if stood up and Kaulder runs after her, leaving the valuables behind. The way in which Sam and Kaulder become friends, start to trust each other and then fall in love through their travels in the Zone and beyond stretches credibility but Able and McNairy’s minimal acting at least puts meat and bones on two otherwise very vague and sketchy character types. Perhaps it is indeed possible that two initially incompatible human beings who are actually starved for proper affection can, through unique shared experiences that involve extreme and intense emotion and behaviour on their part, be more than travelling acquaintances?
As they travel through the Zone, Sam and Kaulder learn something of the aliens’ life-cycle (luckily for them, this doesn’t include humans as larval incubators – Sigourney Weaver can breathe easily now) and see the creatures close up twice: the first time, it’s as though they’re on a safari trip, watching wild animals go about their business; the second time, it’s in a more conventionally sci-fi horror setting with the exception that a screaming US fighter jet on patrol has upset the creatures and caused them to go on a rampage. As a result the two travellers lose their armed escorts and must continue on their own. The movie’s sub-text, which began with the monsters as a metaphor for illegal Mexican and Central American migrants entering the US through the porous US-Mexican border, becomes richer: the alien creatures, through their conversion of the semi-desert region of northern Mexico into lush tropical rainforest (complete with an abandoned Aztec or Mayan pyramid – how that got in there, I’d like to know), represent a regeneration of life and it’s quite possible that through their close contact with the aliens and nature, Sam and Kaulder become awakened to the humanity in themselves.
Sam and Kaulder’s ascent of the Mayan pyramid (representing a failed empire) to rest and view the distant Wall along the US-Mexican border is a remarkable highlight of the movie, not least because of the multi-layered symbolism within the beautiful and atmospheric if slightly unreal scene: among other things, the Wall is a replication of the Great Wall of China, itself a monumental failed attempt to stop barbarian invasions of Chinese empires, and implying that the United States has become a self-made giant ghetto. The symbolism becomes even greater once Sam and Kaulder reach the border and cross over: they leave abundant green nature and walk into a deserted barren landscape where all houses have been hit by air strikes and one survivor they see is severely traumatised. Now the Wall is a veil to stop foreigners from seeing what America has become and how far from the invincible military superpower empire the nation has actually fallen. The conversation the two have about seeing America from the outside while resting on the ruined pyramid’s summit takes on an extra bitter resonance.
We see the aliens only a few times in the film and it’s not until near the film’s end in the petrol station scene that we see them in their rather ordinary giant squid entirety. Sam and Kaulder watch in fascinated awe as two giant aliens, crackling with electrical energy, glide toward each other on their stilts and entwine tentacles. The subliminal message being sent to the two humans is obvious: Sam and Kaulder should stay together rather than return to their empty lives in the world’s biggest hermetically sealed ghetto state. The humans get the message all right (the creatures’ pheromones blowing into their faces help too) and start to kiss. In the meantime a US army convoy, complete with a soldier singing Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”, is barrelling along the road to collect the two travellers.
The film could have been a lot better in its character development – Kaulder is a cynical, unlikeable guy and one wonders what the more capable Sam sees in him, at least until we discover he has a son from an old fling – with better dialogue that doesn’t have to be witty or smart-arse spitfire repartee but at least makes the two lead characters more three-dimensional and maybe more conflicted about what they’re going back to and what they’re giving up at journey’s end. As it turns out, journey’s end is The End for one of the pair. Apart from the two leads and the threadbare plot, the film unfolds rather like a beautiful nature documentary with even the aliens appearing like local wildlife – albeit giant local wildlife toying with ruined fighter jets – and parts of their life-cycle and behaviour on display for open-minded people. The idea of a sci-fi horror film about an alien invasion combining nature documentary, the road movie genre with two people developing a moving relationship and some political commentary is original and inspired, and if the director had had more experience in making movies and didn’t have to do nearly everything himself on a small budget, he could have pulled the whole thing off more successfully and the film might have become a masterpiece. I can see “Monsters” becoming a minor cult classic: it has most of the elements for a great movie and the main thing holding these back is a lack of refinement and development.