The Monster (2016)

Brilliant and touching

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

I tried, I really did. I got 35 minutes in and I just can't stand it any longer. Some alcoholic trailer park mom and her kid sitting in a car is not my idea of entertainment. What was the director thinking? You have to give the audience, something, anything? The movie may be okay. I'll never know because I'm not willing to wait for something to happen. Unless you have plenty of time and are very patient, avoid this one!

A promising premise that didn't deliver. From a technical pov, I believe the movie was really well shot and directed, with some nice cinematography. The cinematography enhanced the setting of the terrifying woods creating a tense atmosphere. The use of light and darkness for suspense was quite clever and I founf myself holding my breath in specific scenes. Unfortunately when it comes to the plot, the movie feels quite flat, unoriginal and repetitive. While the initial setting was promising, and I certainly appreciate the effort to make the characters tridimensional and highlight their emotional bond. The acting is pretty good, Zoe Kazan and Ella Ballentine certainly have chemistry on screen, which made their mother-daugther relationship very real. However, the movie falls apart on its way to the third act. I don't feel like the movie exploited the symbolism as much as it could, so much wasted potential, it did end up falling in a lot of horror clichés.Would I recommend it? I don't know, if you're looking for a good family drama-horror mix, with all its problems The Babdook is far more satisfying in most aspects.

This movie had a lot of potential going in, very classic monster movie feel. The relationship between the mother and daughter has great character dynamic as well. However, everything is basically thrown away in the last act. It's a shame that a lot of talented people did so much apparent hard work to make this movie of good quality, only to have it all trashed by terrible writing in the last act. The movie would have been better had they ended it when the ambulance went off the road. That wouldn't be a great ending but it would be better than the trash they tacked on at the end. The whole monster doesn't like light thing is clamy and not consistent in the movie. The Mom suicide/sacrifice is unmotivated. The girl stopping the monster in midair with an aresol can, is just bad all the way around. The monster can stop a moving ambulance, but aerosol yielded by a little girl is too much for it. Then is the monster made of purely flameable material, because it went up like a bonfire with just a kiss of flame? Really? All this throwing away of a good movie for some half baked, backwards message that little girls are empowered to fight the monsters on their own.

You really just want to punch these characters in the face more and more as the film progresses. With every new instance of whining, cursing and pointless bickering, you feel the anger and frustration swell inside you. I wanted the monster to eat them and get it over with. I have never seen characters that annoyed me so much and made me hate them. And it took less than 30 minutes for that to happen. It's amazing. Add to that the poorly written dialogue and plot, and you get one difficult movie to endure. Forget the terror coming from the threat the monster poses. The real terror is waiting for the characters' mouths to open, as one anticipates the crap that is about to come out. The characters are so poorly written that they are not even consistent in their annoying behaviour. Oh no. The scared girl who five minutes earlier wouldn't even leave the car suddenly enters the woods for no reason. Then she sees something scary, but still doesn't run back to the car, and instead calls to her mother who (as everyone in the audience knows by now) has no intention of paying attention to her. See, if we know she is not going to answer, but the girl (who, as the first act of the film has established, knows how deranged her mother is better than anyone in the world) acts as though she doesn't, that makes the audience angry and frustrated. Unfortunately, almost every round of dialogue between characters and every action they undertake is at best questionable, if not outright nonsensical. I was screaming by the time the monster made its appearance, but not from terror; I was screaming at the characters, hoping they would die.