Monsters: Dark Continent Review

Monsters: Dark Continent was one of my top most anticipated movies of 2015. For months I had this theory that it would turn out to be my biggest surprise hit of the year for multiple reasons including the fact that the first movie turned out to be a hidden gem of 2010. Gareth Edwards (before making the 2014 reboot of Godzilla) did an amazing job with the first Monsters considering the outrageously small budget that he had to work with. The visual FX were certainly not by any means flawless, but considering what he was able to accomplish financially speaking, the visuals came across as breathtaking at times. It was one of those perfect examples of filmmakers creating something amazing due to them having to be very creative with their severely limiting production constraints. I also enjoyed the heavy focus on character relationships over spectacle. Yes, the movie was entitled "Monsters" and involved extraterrestrial creatures, but it focused more heavily on two people journeying through chaos and tragedy eventually finding peace and love in the end.

Monsters came across to me as a beautiful road movie more so than a science fiction creature feature which was fascinating and very unique considering what most filmmakers wanted to bring to the table now that decent enough special FX technology were becoming more accessible. In this sequel however, alongside having a new director, we're given an entirely different experience in terms of characters, action, and story overall. Now, I've definitely seen my fair share of sequels in the past that decided to take on a slightly to drastically different turn from the original titles (such as "Aliens", "Halloween 6", Jason X, Leprechaun 4, etc.), but Dark Continent completely takes the cake for me. Instead of following a couple of average people slowly creating a close relationship with each other in a science-fiction/horror landscape, we follow a bunch of army rookies trying to survive their tours in the Middle East.

In sort of a "Battle: Los Angeles" fashion, the movie starts off with the introduction of these individual soldiers bonding with each other outside of the war before jumping back into the action. There isn't much of a major introduction to the creatures themselves as they're basically established as being part of the new world now more so than an invasion event as anticipated. What we see are these young adults enjoying whatever they can of their lives before getting tossed into the infected zones as well as the insurgency in the Middle East. Some of the creatures are shown off as wildlife in the backdrop of this world. On a side note, there's also a very District 9 inspired moment where we see the humans using one of the aliens in a dog fight which I personally could've done without honestly. 

Speaking on the soldiers that we follow primarily, to be honest, I couldn't really say that I enjoyed watching these characters bond as close friends. I believe it's more of a personal thing for me than blaming it on the movie itself. I simply couldn't see myself hanging out with the types of personalities presented here, but that's not to say that the characters weren't written well or performed well enough. The performances of the soldiers (notice I don't really mention their names due to their easily forgetful presence) were actually not bad and came across as serviceable at best. However, despite having a decent enough cast of characters, the development for this group was seriously lacking at times. It almost felt as if the movie literally dumped a gang of people in front of me forcing me to find a reason to care about each and every one of them without much context. 

The main protagonist, Michael, is sort of the redeeming face here considering that he does come across as the sympathetic and innocent guy at times. That being said, he also suffers from the same issue as everyone else as far as character development goes. This resulted in me feeling like I didn't necessarily mind tagging along with him mainly because he was the least annoying of the bunch. As with everyone else introduced, we have Sergeant Forrest and Sergeant Frater who act as the leaders of this amateur experienced squad of soldiers.

I actually didn't really mind their characters as much as movies usually depict military officials as being major jerks which these two never came across as for me personally. Sgt. Forrest quickly gets removed not too long after his introduction, but we do hold on to Sgt. Frater throughout the rest of the movie who I actually enjoyed the most as the experienced soldier who finds himself slipping away from his family.

One of my biggest complaints unfortunately is the fact that as I'm watching these characters get wiped out left and right in front of me, I found myself having little to no major impact or memory of these individuals whatsoever. The actual death scenes are a little emotional and intense on the surface visually speaking, but due to the poorly executed character development, nothing truly left an impression after they died. One of the key elements of any great war film is usually the characters that you follow along with and the experience that they live through. That being said, there are a couple of great character moments that sort of stuck out to me. One scene including Michael who is forced to make a decision on whether or not to shoot his own sergeant. The reason why that scene worked as well as it did was due to the amount of time we actually spent with the two characters in the 2nd half of the movie.

So in terms of characters overall, I suppose you can say that it's sort of a mixed bag due to having only a small handful of genuinely great moments. Now as far as story goes, I honestly had to do a bit of a mental adjustment in order to fit in with the new war film theme and atmosphere considering of course that the previous entry was far from that. Because of this, it did take a little while to get into this new narrative direction. What's interesting here is how much of a human vs human story is being tackled despite having a science-fiction alien war genre surrounding.

If anything, I can say that the writers at least decided to stick with the themes of the first movie by placing the actual monsters in the background of everything and keeping a central human story in the forefront. We do see these creatures quite a bit, but they never show any significant connection with our characters other than something to shoot at or gaze upon. The Middle East insurgency is the real meat of the story here, but at times, I do wish that we could've hurry along and skip over it as it was the least interesting thing to focus on.

Shot from the teaser trailer

What sold me on this movie leading to it being one of my most anticipated titles of 2015 was the amazing teaser trailer released last year. The teaser showed off the squad cautiously walking through a dust covered field as the sounds and sights of choppers, jets, military com chatter, and explosions surrounded them. After a truck with a large dead creature in the back passes by, the camera centered around Michael staring blankly and fearfully into the distance before cutting to black. It was a powerful teaser and gave me the implication that the film would center around Michael's inexperience with the alien creatures and having to adjust to everything while trying not to lose his own mind in the process. That was the movie that I had high hopes for and was very excited to see from the trailer.

Unfortunately, I was handed over your typical generic military movie having almost nothing to do with the creatures and is basically another "American soldiers vs foreign bad guys" presentation. I was really disappointed with this sequel in that aspect, but after adjusting to the story, I started to understand the direction that the writers were trying to go into. The idea of humans being the real monsters and the aliens merely being a force of nature was a great concept to explore and is something that we rarely get to see in films (District 9 and The Day the Earth Stood Still being the rare examples).

However, the movie's execution of said premise didn't dive into the concept deeply enough giving little to no justice to what the writing entailed. You supposedly see the sympathy for these creatures with Michael's character as he obviously opposes the idea of blindly killing them. However, we never really get a sense of why he feels this way or any impactful moments of him speaking up to his comrades about it. Instead, we're only left to assume after seeing him express a bit of compassion for the creatures in literally two or three scenes. It felt like a huge missed opportunity with the character as well as the overall idea which could've made for a more emotional experience as well as a dramatic character study at times. So much like the characters of Monsters: Dark Continent, the story also comes across as a mixed bag which made me realize that the biggest flaw for me is that nothing ever really reaches its full potential with the groundwork that it lays out.

Now, let's talk about the reason why most people will go out of their way to see this movie in the first place. The monsters themselves are possibly the one thing that elevated the level of the viewing experience to at least being watchable for the most part. The creature designs were solid looking just exotic enough to feel like I'm watching something out of this world and the visual FX work were outstanding to look at. It almost felt like the filmmakers were excited about the production budget given to them and went insane over the monster heavy scenes as much as they could. There are so many great shots of the creatures rampaging through the dust covered landscape of the dessert that I found pretty enthralling to watch. It's also great to see such variety in the creatures themselves showcasing much smaller specimens all the way to creatures as big as skyscrapers. A truly incredible sight to behold.

However, being that these creatures aren't necessarily invaders as we'd traditionally think of "alien invaders", we never really get to see them in action (which will anger a lot of viewers most likely). Instead, there are a few beautiful shots of the creatures basically wandering around the world for the majority of the runtime. The greatest scene comes at the end where this massive "boss battle worthy" creature emerges from the ground in the distance howling into the sky. Sadly, we never get a really good look at this epic scaled entity as only the silhouette can be seen though the dust. So, if you were hoping for the monsters to be given a great deal of attention getting involved with the main characters somehow, you're out of luck I'm afraid.

Overall, as I stated before, the movie suffers a great deal from never reaching its full potential as many key elements get tossed to the side for whatever questionable reasons that the filmmakers had. The visual direction of the film as well as some of the character moments almost feels as though the director (Tom Green) is forcing a sense of dread and grittiness when the film really could've benefited with something a bit more subtle. The best way to describe Monsters Dark Continent is to present it as a serviceable enough "expanded universe story" simply used to flesh out the world in which the first film created. It's not worth revisiting unless you're really interesting in how these creatures have evolved from the original title. Unfortunately, in the end, this sequel comes across as an easily forgettable small science-fiction/monster film with only the occasional sci-fi spectacle worth praising. 

Rating: 6/10