1000 Nights in the Dark: Monsters (2010)

Feature Film | Sci-fi Drama | English & Spanish | 1h34m

Cast: Whitney Able, Scoot McNairy

Capsule review | 186 words | 06/09/11 | 2010 Favourites

Marketed as a thriller – which it certainly isn’t – visual effects designer-turned-film-maker Gareth Edwards’s remarkable feature debut managed to piss off (and likely will continue to piss off) a great number of action-hungry genre fans. The premise – a probe carrying samples of alien life crashes in Mexico, infecting half of the country in the process – offers plenty of scope for District 9-type thrills, but instead the film centres upon the blossoming relationship that develops between a hardened photo journalist and the young woman (the daughter of his boss), whose safety has been entrusted to him, as he escorts her back across the Infected Zone to America. There are some thrills, of course, which can be seen in the various trailers, but the film is essentially a romance – and an affectingly acted, hauntingly scored, and generally impeccably crafted one at that – albeit one with satirical and allegorical undertones. Some of the dialogue, though, occasionally feels a little clunky, and there are perhaps one or two small plot holes, but these are minor quibbles when you consider the film’s overall impact, which climaxes beautifully with a quite sublime ending.

1000 Nights in the Dark: a collection of reviews of the single sentence, capsule, short, medium, and long variety, varying in length from fifty to a thousand-plus words, documenting my personal, exploratory journey through cinephilia.

1000 Nights in the Dark

Monsters (2010)

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