Monsters (2010)

Life goes on, even after an alien invasion. That seems to be the basic message of the 2010 film Monsters. In the film, a space probe returning to earth crashes in Mexico and unleashes strange alien life forms on the Mexican countryside. Mexico is quickly quarantined and a gigantic security fence is erected along the Mexican-U.S. border to keep the creatures from spreading. Kaulder is a photo-journalist documenting the quarantine zone when he gets an assignment to track down and escort his boss’s daughter home from Mexico.

The monsters in the film are always in the background, and we more often see the indirect effects of their existence through increased security, destroyed military hardware, and the distant roar or jet fighters and explosions. Most alien invasion movies depict the invasion as a momentous life changing event for the characters, but Monsters much like 2009’s District 9 focuses more on the day to day grind of having to live your life in a world where aliens are here, and are simply just another fact of life.

Monsters is a film that deals with two people meeting in a strange and alien environment, and developing a fleeting relationship. In this way it is not much different than Lost in Translation, but with Japan instead of Mexico and there are aliens everywhere. The dialog is extremely simplistic and minimal, and you really only get a glimpse of each characters emotions and motivations. There is a lot of talking with the locals and haggling over ticket prices for a ferry, and talking in bars. It is a good forty minutes or so into the film until the characters even attempt to cross the quarantine zone, so those expecting an exciting action film will be completely disappointed. A lot of people will be bored to tears by this movie, and I found myself getting bored with the plot of the film while still enjoying the visuals and atmosphere. The biggest problem is that just not a lot of stuff really happens in the movie at all, but at the same time it still holds you interest as you are curious about what happened to this environment. It is really a movie about exploring a world that is like our own, but slightly off.

The film District 9 had a direct parallel to South African apartheid, and some have claimed Monsters is an obvious commentary on Mexican-American relations and immigration. The comparison is pretty apt as the Mexicans and Americans in the film are jointly working together to combat the aliens, while the United States is desperately trying to keep the chaos and violence from crossing the border to the north. All you have to do is substitute aliens for drug cartels and you pretty have much have the current state of affairs on the border today. But, the allegory of Monsters is even broader in scope.

While watching Monsters I kept feeling like all the visuals and sights the characters witness on their travels were pretty much things you would commonly see on any news report about a third world country. The fighting and conflicts over the last two decades in the Balkans, Middle East, and Africa have probably been as earth shattering and apocalyptic for the people living there as any alien invasion of film. The populace of those places has had to live their lives in the midst of conflict while people in the first world live their lives in a relative safe heaven. Monsters is really therefore, about the divisions between the first and the third world and the safe havens and danger zones that humans live in. With its ending it even tends to imply that the safe heavens can never be safe forever.

Monsters is a pretty boring movie. But, it has a nice relaxing, soothing boring that I enjoyed. I feel like I could almost watch the movie on mute and enjoy it just as much as if it had sound. It is an odd movie.

7/10