MONSTERS (2010)

Before he cut his teeth on major franchises like Godzilla (2014), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), and Jurassic World Rebirth (2025), Gareth Edwards directed Monsters, a film that feels as much like a fully formed project as it is a proof of concept. It’s perhaps the most impressive low-budgeted movie I’ve ever come across, making great use of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina for its depictions of rubble and abandoned homes. There is semi-frequent VFX present to depict the octopus-like aliens that now roam through the Americas, all of which looks practically seamless, even to viewers who are well-versed in discerning authenticity in computer effects, given their current prevalence.

Most of the sequences featuring the aliens were shot at night, masking some of the budgetary limitations, but what’s truly remarkable is how, despite only having £300,000 at their disposal (and wrapping up filming having spent far less than this), there are no glaring examples of corners being cut in Monsters. For the vast majority of filming, the crew consisted of seven people, which, aside from Edwards, included Scoot McNairy (Speak No Evil) and Whitney Able, Monsters’ leads. The pair were a real-life couple whose chemistry inspired the director to overlook his reservations about Able being too good-looking to portray one half of a couple that feel like real people. Over 100 hours of footage were shot and a four-hour cut was assembled, which was eventually whittled down to just over 90 minutes. The visual effects were largely composed by Edwards working alone in his bedroom, while cheap digital cameras were used for the shoot to bring down costs.

Monsters should not look this good, nor should it so acutely portray its intimate or grand moments, not least because this was Edwards’s feature directorial début. To craft a science fiction story with diverse locations, action sequences, and ginormous CGI aliens is a massive undertaking, even when you’re not having to worry about falling in line with a tiny budget for a film of this scale. But while all of these facets are present and conveyed with a strong enough degree of immersion to briefly transport viewers into a more action-packed, chaotic, and intense film than they’d been accustomed to, Monsters is very misleading, from its title all the way down to the film’s promotional material.

There are aliens, yes, but they’re never depicted as bloodthirsty villains. Ultimately, they’re unknowable, a species that didn’t seek to invade this planet (they emerged on Earth after a NASA space probe crash-landed in Mexico) and have no obvious purpose or motive here. Are they the monsters from this movie’s title, simply because they propagate and attack anything that’s a threat to them? What about the soldiers who attempt to vanquish these extraterrestrial beings? Perhaps the true villainy comes in the form of ignorance, with Samantha Wynden (Able), the daughter of photojournalist Andrew Kaulder’s (McNairy) employer, appearing oblivious to the suffering of the world around her, especially outside the giant wall erected around the Mexico-US border.

Or is Andrew, who photographs suffering readily and whose first instinct upon seeing a dead body is to snap a picture, the villain in question? Should we shift the blame instead to his employers, who only pay him for downtrodden faces, grim circumstances, and horrific calamities? As Andrew accompanies Samantha through the so-called infected zone in Mexico in order to get her safely back to the US, the pair come across a wealth of horrifying and beautiful sights, the likes of which could both reinvigorate and crush one’s belief in humanity. But there are no one-note villains in sight, only beings that struggle to get along, living their lives the only way they know how.

These characters are oblivious as to how to deal with one another, let alone a different species. For all the talk of danger amidst the alien-riddled regions across Mexico, no one ever stops to think about these creatures’ motives. Instead, they assume that anything different is a threat, integrating seamlessly into a divisive system that only ends up causing bloodshed on either side. Given that this story follows a (presumably) wealthy young woman who has never had to contend with the grim day-to-day realities of making ends meet or having to resume everyday life where literal aliens render certain territories uninhabitable, forcing her to go on a journey of discovery and find that we aren’t as different as we might seem, one of the film’s dominant themes centres on immigration between the US, Mexico, and other countries south of that all-important border.

Edwards isn’t interested in using the fantastical realm of aliens roaming Earth to pride himself on making a clever real-world parallel. Instead, he focuses on creating a wistful reflection on how entrenched we are in the process of othering and the systems that dictate this behaviour. These effects are so pronounced that it renders Monsters’s characters incapable of unpacking their biases, let alone exploring systemic change. The immigration system might as well be an institution at this point, and with plain-clothes ICE officers knocking down people’s doors to demand citizenship papers, it’s more relevant now than at any other time since this film’s release 15 years ago.

Edwards doesn’t have answers for these social quandaries, which is for the best; he finds consistent beauty in questioning their existence instead. Both Andrew and Samantha are dissatisfied with their personal lives and where they have wound up, finding solace among each other, but possessing little to no ability to fight for their happiness together. Even when this journey unites them, there are limits to understanding and connection that prove paralysing. Letting go of your ego, your fear, or your obligations to others to be with the person you’re most comfortable with proves as difficult as wading through unknown territory or encountering extraterrestrial beings.

Samantha is in a loveless marriage, while Andrew’s career-driven wanderings have led him astray from meaningful relationships. Before these characters can even understand one another on a deeper level, they are already emotionally invested in the dynamic that forms between them. Early on in Monsters, Samantha feels betrayed to see another woman lying in Andrew’s bed, despite being married and hardly knowing this near-stranger. Their bond isn’t wordless, but it carries the kind of mystical, unknowable beauty that the pair frequently come across along their path through treacherous territory. This quest is terrifying, too, as all big risks are, whether that’s leaving the person you committed to spending the rest of your life with or abandoning everything you built up to travel through arduous conditions in the hopes of securing a better life on the other side of this hellscape.

Monsters never condescends to either avenue for fulfilment, nor does it feel as if it’s trying to say that they’re exactly the same, meeting each of these characters at their level and recognising that while they might not be perfect, they’re at least trying. As a result, the film does float aimlessly at times, its meandering plot tied together through gorgeous score from composer Jon Hopkins, excellent use of locations, remarkable CGI, and two main characters that feel like real people. You can see the cracks forming in this story along the way—no doubt a by-product of the fact that this film was likely made without a clear plan in mind, as its four-hour original runtime suggests—but even they possess charm in this imperfect film following imperfect characters.

Able isn’t nearly as talented a performer as McNairy, and while that’s partly due to the fact that he’s a severely underrated actor who still hasn’t been given enough opportunities to showcase his acting ability, there are sequences where one can hear and see a world of difference in the acting calibre of their performances. It would be a bare-faced lie to say that this isn’t distracting, but while it’s Monsters’s most egregious flaw, the actress still proves serviceable. The chemistry between the pair, owing to their relationship together and the 10-year marriage that blossomed from it, makes it incredibly easy to see how these two characters struggle to imagine spending the rest of their lives without being in one another’s presence, even though they have only just met.

Monsters is a story about the impossible distance and closeness that exists between us all. It’s a love story steeped in tragedy and a grim look at humanity attempting to struggle through the kind of ordeal that normally lends itself to action-packed cinematic extravaganzas, replete with the screams of innocent civilians and gunfire. This isn’t that kind of film whatsoever, and despite some of its flaws, it’s for the better that it takes the road less travelled in exploring humanity’s realistic responses to the arrival of aliens.

USA | 2010 | 94 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writer & director: Gareth Edwards.
starring: Scoot McNairy, Whitney Able, Mario Zuniga Benavides & Annalee Jefferies.