Australian Competitions Club

Gareth Edwards' directorial debut is a road-trip romance rather than an action-packed thriller. Edwards dispensed with a script to explore more liminal terrain - borderlands of mood as well as geography. I think he succeeds - in a shaggy way. Monsters is visually immediate and often quite poetic. It's also quotidian, confused and corny the way dreams can be. But let's face it; Christopher Nolan doesn't direct everyone's dreams.

While its border-panic rhetoric immediately recalls District 9's racial allegory, Monsters relegates politics to sentimental spectacle, much as photojournalist Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) cynically tells his boss's free-spirited daughter Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able) that pics of dead brown kiddies tug on heartstrings and purse-strings alike.

Kaulder must shepherd Sam home from Central America through an ‘infected zone' between Mexico and the United States that's inhabited by bioluminescent, tentacled aliens. Considering its tiny budget, Monsters is astonishingly convincing in bringing to grimy life this uncanny no-man's land, irrevocably scarred by official retaliation to the unknown.

Monsters also reminds me of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker in that entering the ‘infected zone' allows the protagonists to speak freely of their true desires. Suspended in artificial intimacy, they can't help reaching for each other.

What:
Monsters

When:
In cinemas from November 25

Watch trailer:
Here

Win:

Thanks to Madman, we're hosting our own special preview screening at 6.30pm, Tuesday November 23 at Palace Barracks! The first 100 to enter will win a double pass! Email brisbane.win@rightanglestudio.com.au with the subject line ‘I used to practice laughing'