Love and Monsters - Movie Review
Love and Monsters was one of the many movies lost in the chaos of 2020. While it’s premise and story is fun and uplifting, it’s marketing campaign missed the mark. You can’t blame the studio really. 2020 was a horrible year, even by Trump era standards. Advertising during the pandemic was an amazing mishmash of blind attempts at levity and shock. Neither of which the public wanted anything to do with, but I digress.
YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE
The movie is based on the classic teen movie trope: handsome loser has a girlfriend out of town. In this case, the handsome loser is trapped in a bunker due to a cryptid apocalypse. To put it simply, all animal and plant life on the planet has been cthulusized into monstrous mutations. Our hero, Joel is an everyday kid who has lost everything. He watched his parents die, his girlfriend disappeared, and his entire neighborhood was destroyed. To his knowledge he is the only survivor. His home town is legendary as ground zero for the Monsterpocalypse. Meanwhile, Joel is much less than Legendary. He’s a banal loser whose only contributions to his bunker (think Fallout) are his Minestrone and his ability to troubleshoot radio tower issues. When he finds out that his girlfriend is alive in a neighboring bunker 80 miles away and that she will be leaving her safe haven soon, he decides he needs to find her. Thus his oddity of self discovery begins. With the aid of a super smart dog, a talking robot, and a spot on Michael Rooker, he travels the wastelands fighting horrifying beasts. Interested yet? If not, you’re on the wrong website.
I don’t want to spoil any of the story, because it is genuinely entertaining. I want to compliment Dylan O’Brien, the lead of this picture. He was good in the Maze Runner series, in which he almost died in real life. He really shines in this film. I doubted he could carry a film, but I was proved wrong.
My expectations of mediocrity extended to the monster design and I’m happy to say I was wrong on that front as well. The creature design is downright gorgeous and horrifying in equal measures. The monsters come alive and have personality. They all have expressive eyes and lifelike movements. The monsters and the landscape work in unison which actually works as part of the story. The special effects and writing teams work in unison to delivery an amazing tale told not only with words but with the environment.
Please see this move… I want a sequel.
