7th May 2015 20:50 Bolton
The belated sequel to the Gareth Edwards home project felt like it knew what it wanted to do, it just didn't know how to do it.
I saw Monsters a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, although it is not a film I have re-watched since that initial viewing. A film about monsters that shows little of the monsters and is more character based. Gareth Edwards did all the visual effects on a limited budget and at home in his bedroom. Proving that big things could be done with big imaginations, this opened him up to do the recent Godzilla film, but that is another story, and one that doesn't feature much of the titular monster as well.
Based a few years after the original, the armed forces are now eliminating the hulking alien creatures using tactical strikes and big weapons, but this has been resulting in civilian casualties in the Middle East, which in turn is causing the local insurgents to retaliate. When a crew of naive Detroit soldiers join the war, they are hungry for a bug hunt, but when they are sent on a recovery mission the facts of war come to life.
Monster: DC had a couple of scenes where the visual landscape was very artistic and detailed character emotional states. It also makes you question who are the monsters? The physical being of the "Monsters" are graceful and never with malicious intent. The just happen to be massive and clumsy footed sometimes. When one of the massive behemoths finds a downed mate, the emotion portrayed shows how angelic these creatures are. There is a scene reminiscent of the Gallimimus stampede from Jurassic Park, smaller monsters are flocking around the Humvee's of our main characters with no threat. Just passing by and running along side the vehicles, delicately avoiding contact.
It just seemed to long and without reason for far too long, there is lots in the film for me to enjoy, but I just didn't. It felt like it was trying to be something it wasn't, trying to hard to capture the emotion and feeling of the first film but make it bigger. It was slow and the majority of characters were void of character.
If you haven't seen Monsters, then it is worth a watch, if you haven't seen Monsters:DC then just watch Monsters again.
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