Monsters or: A Poignant, Highly Underrated Character Journey, Cinematic Spectacle, and Gentle Allegory (Film Analysis)

Things are not what they appear.

Monsters is as much a monster film, as Drive is a driving film.  From their premise to their trailer, both films misdirect viewers as to what their story is offering.  Yet whereas Drive reveals its true colors early on, Monsters takes it a step further—toying with audience expectations right up to its final scene.  Such extreme misdirection understandably confused and irritated a lot of viewers.  If you are going to see a film labeled as science-fiction horror about two people trying to survive a quarantined zone of giant extraterrestrial Cthulhus, there are certain tropes and features you may expect and/or desire.  And when said film delivers quite the opposite experience, well, some people are going to leave feeling cheated.

Yet just as disappointment is in the eye of the beholder, so is beauty—and where some desire one thing and get nothing in return, some desire one thing and get something as good if not far superior instead.  Monsters does just the latter: I went in expecting one thing and received something far more poignant and thought-provoking.  Revisiting the film nine years after its initial release and I’ve found even more to appreciate—with subtle themes and details I completely missed on the first viewing, and areas that have grown more impactful over recent years.

Monsters opens with text informing the audience that six years prior, NASA discovered the possibility of alien life-forms in our solar system.  A space probe was launched to collect samples yet broke up during re-entry over Mexico.  Alien life-forms appeared out from the crash and began spreading throughout the Mexico-United States border region.  The region was soon quarantined and declared the Infected Zone, with both the U.S. and Mexican military fighting to keep the creatures from spreading any further.

The film cuts to a U.S. patrol team driving to procure one male and one female from the Infected Zone. The scene begins lightheartedly with one of the soldiers humming Ride of the Valkyries, declaring it his new theme song.  The cheer is interrupted, however, when the group runs into one of the alien creatures—a towering cephalopod-like being with multiple tentacles and long, spider legs.  The scene is filmed using night vision and a shaky cam, making it difficult to determine everything that is happening.  The style works great with intensifying the frantic situation as the soldiers fire wildly at the behemoths—who are calculatedly difficult to truly make out—as bodies lie across the street and a man wildly screams for help throughout the chaos.  The scene is stopped dead in its tracks when an alien is directly struck by a Hellfire missile, leading to the film’s title screen.

…More on that later.

Monsters moves to daytime in San Jose Central America where American photojournalist Andrew (Scoot McNairy) has been tasked by his employer to locate and bring back to the States their publication’s boss’s daughter Sam (Whitney Able).  Andrew is reluctant to do so, having waited three years for his big chance to snag a photo of one of the creatures alive—which, in turn, would make his publisher’s front page—yet, nonetheless, agrees to the task.  Andrew eventually finds Sam at a local hospital, who aside from a minor arm injury is in good health.  After Andrew has a brief phone conversation with Sam’s father about bringing his daughter home safe and sound, the pair begin their journey, unaware of just how life-changing it will be.

The very construct of Monsters plot and its aesthetic look are automatically intriguing and enticing to me.  I have a fondness for journey-driven plots, yet throw in some horror elements promising vague, cosmic beings, as well as a hint of romance, and the film has me hook, line, and sinker.  Monsters’ aesthetic is something out of an early-mid 2000s horror game like Resident Evil 4 or Silent Hill 3—having a grainy, subdued look to it.  I am nostalgically biased towards such style, having very fond memories of playing these games with friends and family as a young teen.  The film's opening premise is similar to Resident Evil 4—my favorite video game of all time—featuring a male protagonist assigned to rescue the blond daughter of his powerful employer from a dangerous foreign area.  Monsters’ opening happens to hit all the right buttons for me, making it very easy to get enthusiastically invested early on.

The pair hitch a train ride out of the city, treating the audience to some gorgeous landscape shots.  When the train faces damaged tracks and is forced to turn around, Andrew and Sam decide to depart on foot to the next city.  Unlike Andrew, Sam can speak fluent Spanish, allowing them to communicate and take shelter at a local family’s house along the way.  The family is quite hospitable to Sam and Andrew, feeding them and even offering blankets and food as a parting gift.  The head of the family even mistakes Sam and Andrew as a married couple due to Sam’s engagement ring from her fiancé.

Aside from the opening text, Monsters takes the show don’t tell route by telling its lore through visual background details over direct exposition.  The audience gets a feel of how the land has changed since the creatures arrived.  In San Jose, wrecked buildings and weaponized military vehicles are casually seen across the area.  The locals, however, have come to accept the situation as a part of life:

Sam: Do you feel safe living here?

Taxi Driver: Where would we go? My work, my family are all here. This happens every year. We just take our chances.

While on the train, Andrew photographs military helicopters flying around and other trains that have been thrown off their tracks.  At night, lights and explosions can be seen on the other side of the mountainous area.  While hitchhiking their way across the country, the pair see ravaged tanks next to local houses and scavenged airplane engines being carried by horse-drawn carriages.  Andrew takes pictures of the local children, prompting a conversation with Sam about the morality of making a profit from taking pictures of other people’s suffering:

Sam: Doesn't that kind of bother you...that you need something bad to happen to profit from it?

Andrew: You mean, like a doctor?

Sam: You know what I mean.

Andrew: Yeah, I know what you mean. Come on. Let me ask you something…do you know how much money your father's company pays for a picture of a child killed by a creature? $50,000. Do you know how much money I get paid for a picture of a happy child? Nothing. Do you know where that puts me? Photographing tragedy. I don't cause it. I just document it.

Posters, graffiti, and televisions are seen and/or heard on the pair’s journey gives the audience further insight into this new world without needing its characters—who would already be knowledgeable with these publicized facts—to unnaturally explain or ask about it.  A map at the train station shows where the Infected Zone is exactly located, a children’s cartoon is seen teaching kids to put on their gas masks when the monsters are near, and a news report reveals that the creatures have increased their attempts at migrating into the U.S. territory, with the newly elected president having built a massive wall around the Mexican border in order to block these aliens from getting in...huh, now doesn’t that sound familiar…

Andrew and Sam learn that the U.S. military willing be blocking all travel between countries for six months in the next two days, raising the stakes for when she needs to get home.  The pair reach the ferry for crossing over to the States and, after paying a hefty sum of five-thousand dollars, purchase a ticket for Sam to get across the next day.  Both stuck there for the night, Sam and Andrew decide to go out and see the town.  While the pair initially don’t get along—Andrew openly referring to escorting Sam as babysitting and treating her like a child and Sam disliking his patronizing attitude and insensitive regard for the locals—such clashing is quickly put to rest for a more civil, friendly relationship.  The two bond with each other through humorous small talk and drinks, eventually leading to more flirtatious, personal conversations.  It’s made clear that Sam is highly conflicted over her engagement, being a great source of stress to her.  It’s also revealed that Andrew has a son, though he does not tell Sam about him.

In one part of the town is a lively festive place, yet in another part, the vibe changes completely as the pair come across a massive memorial for the deceased.  Signs inform that over five thousand are dead, while another sign reads in bold text “NO BOMBING”.  The pair climb above the city where the film treats the viewer with more gorgeous shots, that is until military helicopters fly over the scene, blowing out the memorial's many candles.  Over thirty minutes into the ninety-minute film and aside from the opening scene and background activities/wreckage, Monsters is more akin to a romantic travel-drama than a sci-fi horror about violent space aliens.  That seems to change when Sam's ticket is stolen and the last ferry leaves, forcing the pair to buy the even heftier ten-thousand-dollar sum—using Sam's engagement ring as payment—to travel illegally through the Infected Zone.  Tension is raised as the pair descend into the Infected Zone, passing a boom gate with a death skull on it, and houses armed with automatic machine guns.

After driving sometime in a truck, the pair get on a riverboat and start riding across the river to their next destination.  Seen on the riversides are crumbling hotels, tanker ships on top of giant trees, and cities now turned into abandoned ruins.  While stopping for gas, the group hear eerie, unnatural noises coming from within the forest, causing the pitstops’ guard to nervously cock his machine gun.  Sam asks Andrew about his son despite Andrew never being shown to mention him (perhaps it happened offscreen?).  The audience learns that a brief fling led to the son, though Andrew is not directly in the son’s life nor considered his father—being only allowed to visit him at times.

The evening arrives with chilling screeches heard all around the boat.  The unsettling scene is interrupted when an old submerged fighter jet immerges from beneath the waters—being lifted by a hidden creature underneath.  The scene should be absolutely terrifying, and yet is strangely not despite the soundtrack getting louder and more intense.  Perhaps it has to do with the curiosity Andrew displays while taking pictures, or his amused reply to Sam’s more fearful reaction, or when the soundtrack calms for a brief moment and the creature can be heard underneath making tranquil sounds almost reminiscent of a whale call.  The film is playing with the audience here, perplexing them over what kind of film Monsters exactly is.

The cinematography during the boat scenes is, you guessed it, absolutely gorgeous—particularly when the morning sun rises over the river.  For a science-fiction horror, Monsters has been unusually calm, serene, and beautiful—though it constantly throws in small, alarming reminders of horror for the audience, such as an abandoned boat with bloody handprints.  At the next stop, Andrew and Sam are dropped off to travel on land with a bunch of unruly looking men with machine guns.  The scene screams danger for the pair, yet such expectations are subverted when the men turn out to be kind and helpful.  The group camp for the night—waiting for another family to come pick up the pair—and begin talking about the creatures, giving Sam, Andrew, and the audience a new perspective on them:

Sam: Do you feel safe staying here?

Man: Yes, in the high grounds you know you're safe. In the rivers, you are not safe. If you don't bother them, they don't bother you.

The men inform how the creatures can be over a hundred meters tall, how the U.S. planes flying overhead make them mad and aggressive, and that the bombers have been dropping chemical poisons in the area to kill the creatures’s eggs, hence the real reason people carry around gasmasks.  The men note how the trees are "infected" with the creatures’s eggs and take the pair to see them.  It's a rather beautiful sight, with these little luminescent, electrified pods sparkling in the night.  The creatures act similar to newts, living in the rivers only to come out to mate and lay eggs.  The more we learn about the creatures the more it becomes apparent that these eldritch abominations are not quite what they initially appeared.

Sam and Andrew share an intimate moment around the campfire as Andrew adjusts Sam’s arm casting and kisses her hand.  Sam notes how her arm feels a lot better without all the weight, referring to the engagement ring that she gave away.  The calm and serene is interrupted, however, by the distant sound of fighter aircrafts bombing the area.  The group quickly rush to their trucks and leave yet run right into a creature who has been driven into a rage from the bombings.  The creature viciously lifts up one of the trucks and sends it crashing down.  The men fire at the beast, yet the bullets are ineffective, seeming to only make the creature angrier.  A terrified Andrew and Sam hide in one of the trucks as the remaining men are killed outside.  An hour in and this is the first onscreen creature attack since the opening scene—believe it or not, it’s also the last.

Having successfully stayed hidden from the creature overnight, Andrew and Sam wake up the next morning (how they could have possibly fallen asleep after that is anyone’s guess) as the sole survivors.  Andrew surveys the situation, retrieving his camera off the corpse of one of the men who had been playing with it the night before.  Despite the gruesome, dire situation, Andrew is still focused on his photojournalism and getting a live photo of the creatures (though he wasn’t stupid enough to try getting one the night before).  This would make Andrew look quite heartless, if he didn’t stop to cover up and mourn a small child who belonged to the family coming to pick them up (all tragically killed by the rampaging creature).

The pair continue across the beautiful yet bug-infested landscape until they come across an ancient Aztec pyramid.  The pair climb up the pyramid to stay the night.  Despite the clouds blocking out the night sky, it is still a serene, lovely sight with some breathtaking cinematic shots at the top that are, well you know the drill by now—come on, let’s all say it together:

Monster’s cinematography is simply gorgeous.

On top of the pyramid, the pair get their first glimpse of the wall dividing Mexico and the States: a massive blockade that makes the Great Wall look puny in comparison.  The pair are not as excited to see the wall as they thought they would be:

Sam: I thought I'd be a lot happier to see it. I feel like I could cry, but I don't know if it would be a happy cry or a sad cry.

Andrew: It's different looking at America from the outside...in. You know, just sitting right outside and looking in. You know, when you get home it's so easy to forget all this. I mean, tomorrow we'll be back to our separate lives in our, like, perfect suburban homes. You know, everything that we've been through...it won't matter anymore.

Andrew tries bringing up the dead girl from earlier, who has affected him more than he realizes, but an uncomfortable Sam changes the subject to a more silly, lighthearted discussion on practicing laughing.

LOOK OUT! MAJOR SPOILERS ONWARD:

The pair continue walking the next day into the deserted outskirts of a former American town that has been abandoned.  After a very odd jump-scare (in general, the film’s jump scares are more bizarre than frightening) the two come across a working gas station.  Andrew uses the station’s working phone to call in an American evacuation team.  While waiting, the pair make simultaneous phone calls to their son and fiancé.  Andrew gets highly emotional while on the phone, breaking down into tears, while Sam is aloof towards her fiancé.  As Andre and Sam silently contemplate everything that’s happened, the distant strikes of thunder reveal the massive silhouette of a creature heading towards the gas station.

This is it.  Despite all the unexpected elements and deviations from the expected formula, Monsters had me believing on my first viewing that this was the big sci-fi horror climax where the pair would have to survive being killed by the beasts until the military showed up.  And at first, it seems this way, with Sam hiding in the gas station as the creature’s tendrils come slithering in, intense violin music cueing up in the background.  Yet the creature shows no interest in finding Sam, instead, using its tendrils to absorb electrical power from a working television.  After shutting off the power, the mildly frustrated creature departs the station and moves on to its real objection: a fellow mate come in from the opposite end.

There’s a scene, within the film’s first-third, where a television in the background discusses the mating habits of jellyfish; “locating the mate, within the endless darkness, can be the hardest journey of all. Each year, the female releases chemicals that the male can sense over a hundred miles away.  Attracted by her bioluminescent light, the pair cautiously mate.  Fusing their tentacles together in a vivid display of color.”  The creatures begin a very similar mating process—fusing their own tentacles as their bodies vibrantly illuminate in the dark while emitting peaceful, whale-like calls at each other.  The scene is beautiful—leaving Sam, Andrew, and myself in a state of wonder at the serene spectacle.  Despite having a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get the perfect photo for his publication, Andrew shows no interest in taking a picture—walking right into the open with Sam to watch these creatures interact.  The giant pair then depart opposite directions into the night, leaving the little pair unharmed.

These creatures are not eldritch abomination monsters.  They are animals, who share many similarities to actual animals on Earth itself.  They are large semiaquatic beings with a taste for electricity, and while they can be dangerous—and their affiliation for electricity makes them difficult to coexist with humans—they are not a malicious evil out to destroy.  Well, who exactly then is the film’s title referring to?  If a viewer hasn’t already guessed, it’s made clear when the American evacuation team comes into frame with one of the soldiers humming the all too familiar tune of Ride of the Valkyries.

The heartbreaking realization is that Monsters opening scene isn’t the prologue to Sam and Andrew’s journey, it’s their epilogue.  Just like the jellyfish documentary, the film has spoiled itself without the audience realizing it.  In fact, a little fridge logic reveals the opening makes no sense within the context.  The opening scene is noted to take place within the Infected Zone, while Andrew finds Sam some distance away in San Jose (we never actually learn how Sam was injured).  Yet because of the latter daytime scene—involving Andrew looking around an attacked area for Sam—is cut to directly after the former nighttime skirmish, the audience is fooled while given no time to contemplate if the context makes sense or not.  When I first saw Monsters, I assumed the man wildly screaming within the blurry opening chaos was one of the soldiers.  Watching it again with the revealed knowledge and use of the pause button, and it becomes clear that the screaming man is Andrew—frantically asking anyone for help as he holds a limp Sam in his arms.

The chronological last shot of the pair is the patrol retreating as the Hellfire missile is launched, leaving Andrew behind as he chases them with Sam in his arms (I presume a frantic Andrew refused to leave an injured/dead Sam behind, so the patrol, refusing to take the “dead weight”, ditched them both).  Yet the last sequential shot of the pair occurs as the military close in to pick them up.  Over the journey, both characters have grown to realize what they truly want.  Andrew realizes that he desires family more than fame and wealth.  He wants to be with his son and to be with Sam.  Sam, likewise, no longer desires the life she has back in the States, and openly confesses these feelings to Andrew in their last moments together.  Sam then walks close to Andrew, who embraces her in a passionate kiss, only for the military to break them apart as the screen turns to black and the credits roll.

Monsters is a potent tragedy for many reasons, but most surprisingly it’s a tragic love story.  Surrounding its star-crossed pair’s journey are themes and allegories about humanity and our treatment towards ourselves and other species.  It doesn’t take a genius to realize humans are the film’s real monsters or notice the similarities between the film’s story and real-world events regarding Mexico and the U.S.A.’s relationship.  The military is largely responsible for many of the civilian deaths, whether through collateral damage from their bombings and/or poison drops (the only reason gas masks are needed when the creatures are nearby) or agitating the creatures into a violent frenzy.

The locals are shown to be adjusting to the creatures’s inhabitance—learning to live alongside them in relative peace.  Yet the U.S. military’s constant assaults are not for the local’s benefits, but rather to keep out the creatures from their country.  The film focuses on the Mexican inhabitants, fleshing them out with many positive, humanly qualities.  The taxi driver who is friendly and open to the pair, the family who offer their home, food, and belongings to them, and the armed escorts whose dangerous appearance is offset by their amiable nature.  The film is wise to not make every local a good, wholesome person, but its intention to showcase Mexico’s hospitable side—aimed towards outsiders who view the country as a dangerous, ruthless land—is largely successful.

It's amazing how well Monsters’ portrayal of Mexico-U.S.A. relations has aged over the decade.  The fact that the 2010 film takes place around 2016 and features a newly elected U.S. president who built a massive wall along the Mexico-United States border is either some remarkable predicting skills from the writers or, what is far more likely, a stroke of lucky coincidence.  Yet while almost certainly not the intention at the time, Monsters has, nonetheless, become an effective allegory of the Trump Administration.

Monsters’ themes and allegories were nothing new to fiction or cinema at the time, yet the film manages to make them feel fresh and appealing through the manner it tells.  The film is an expert at leading one astray from its true colors—its statements often conveyed through background observations while misdirecting the audience into believing its black-and-white premise of humanity vs the creatures.  When the film occasionally gets upfront with its true agenda (most instances occurring within the last twenty minutes), it merely nudges said ideas at the audience in a way that never disrupts or feels unnatural to Sam and Andrew’s journey.  Compare Monsters’ technique to the likes of the similar premised District 9—a film that sledgehammers its allegory into the audience so bluntly that it can hardly be considered an allegory at all.

The beauty of Monsters is a viewer can enjoy and appreciate it’s human-driven story alone without being aware of its ulterior thematic motives.  Yet these motives are still present, and whether conscious of them or not, the film gets its points across.  As noted, however, not everyone is pleased with what Monsters truly is.  This isn’t the last time director Gareth Edwards frustrated his audience, as his second feature film 2014’s Godzilla—which Monsters landed him the role as director—similarly received negative audience reception for being a two-hour giant monster film that is noticeably sparse with its monsters.  Yet if one can look past what they expected, and see what Edwards aims for in these films, one will find their true purpose and beauty.  In the end, Monsters may not be an effective sci-fi horror, but as a character journey, a cinematic spectacle, and a political allegory, Monsters remains wildly remarkable.