poly-nikes

Great God, what a terrible film. Many films "date" badly, but this one is possibly the worst I've ever had the misfortune to sit through. It comes across as a hopelessly amateurish movie, rather than a mainstream Hollywood production. You can figure out who the killer is before too long -- even a blind man could tell the guy is wearing a hokey rubber mask. I've seen better makeup on children calling at my house on Halloween. And the murder, with the cord of the electric drill popping out of the wall at the last minute -- a break, render unto me one. Even the over-rated Hitchcock wasn't that lame, although he came pretty close at times.

Finally, does anybody out there think that Craig Wasson looks like the love child of Jeff Bridges and Bill Maher? That was so distracting to me, that, even if the film had been any good, I couldn't have sat back and enjoyed it.

The reason this film was made on a relatively small budget is simple -- there are no sets (everything's filmed on location) and no discernible story.

A number of the reviewers predictably trotted out the old "emperor's new clothes" cliché, i. e., those of us who didn't like the film are too stupid to "get" it. But the sad truth is that this is simply an extremely boring film. To market it as a thriller is just downright misleading and dishonest. I counted no thrills at all in this turkey.

It did attain a measure of achievement in my eyes, however, by knocking my previous choice of "Meek's Cutoff" as the most boring film I've ever seen out of first place. Move over "Meek's Cutoff" and make room for "Monsters." At ninety-four minutes, sitting through this film was like watching an uncut version of Sergey Bondarchuk's 1967 "War and Peace," which, at almost seven hours, actually seemed shorter than "Monsters." No mean feat.

There was one bright spot, however, in Whitney Able, a very attractive and charismatic actress, so all was not lost. Had it not been for the presence of Ms. Able, I would have given "Monsters" a zero rating, rather than a 1. Please, Mr. Gareth Edwards, no more like this.

I think a lot of viewers read more into this film than is there. I didn't think it was all that good. For one thing, near the beginning, the Eastwood character cannot hit a stationary bucket with his six-gun at very close range; yet, in the denouement, he goes into action like Wild Bill Hickock on steroids, taking on a whole room full of bad guys and taking them all out on his own. Where did he acquire this acuity? We don't see him taking intensive target practice throughout the film.

This is an overrated film, no more realistic than the average John Wayne shoot-'em-up, yet most reviewers were drooling and falling over themselves to praise it. The more recent "Open Range" was much better. The Kevin Costner character could have had Clint Eastwood's character for breakfast.