Monsters: Dark Continent

OMG! I just saw this and...don't! It was soooo boring. It was NOTHING like the first movie. I know the director said it wasn't a sequel, but still, it was not good. A big problem was the title. It's called Monster: The Dark Continent. The dark continent is what Africa's known as. However, this movie seemed more like a film about the Iraq war with the monsters as a very distant backdrop. Granted, they didn't say they were in Iraq. I don't actually recall them saying where the film took place.

Some said the acting was bad. I didn't have a problem with the acting. The cinematography was good. I just expected something VERY different.

Some of the monsters were like galloping antelope. Others were like birds. Some seemed like walking trees. The point is, they didn't come across as any sort of a threat. As I said, boring.

I gave this a 4-star rating. I do not recommend. Watch the first one, and look at that as a one-story movie. This one didn't do anything but bore me to tears. Now I'm really tired. When I feel like going to sleep after watching a movie -- in the early evening -- that's how I can tell a movie sucked.

"This was our home. It was our last day, so for those last few hours we needed to forget about what was coming." Ten years after the monsters landed on Earth things have gotten worse. They have begun to fully take over the entire planet and now with the US military using all of its resources to fight them off they now have to contend with a new type of insurgency. I will start by saying that I remember seeing the first one, thinking it was a little slow, but it's been so long all I remember about it is the cheesy ending. I had the same expectations for this one. I was wrong. While I though this one was a little better it was still pretty slow moving and was really missing something the first one had...monsters. In terms of war movies this one is pretty decent, the problem with it is that every so often a monster would pop up out of nowhere, presumably to remind you the movie is called monsters. Some movies are deceiving because of the trailers released, they seem funny and are really dramas, etc...this is the first movie I have seen where the title is misleading. This is really just another US vs Taliban movie, with an occasional (out of place) monster thrown in. Overall, a movie much like Battle LA, if there were no aliens in that movie. I give this a C.

"Why am I here? What am I doing here?"

Gareth Edward's low-budget feature debut, Monsters, made some noise with critics as well as with Hollywood producers who decided to hire him for the latest Godzilla remake, which I happened to enjoy quite a bit. Since then he has become a household name and is already working on a Star Wars anthology film and on the Godzilla sequel. Edwards managed to direct an entertaining sci-fi film using alien monsters as the background to tell the story of a journalist trying to escort an American tourist through an infected zone in Mexico back to the US. The film created a wonderful atmosphere and in a lesser way served as an allegory on the US immigration system.

Five years later, we get a sequel to Monsters and a new director. This is Tom Green's first feature film and he had a bigger budget to work with than Edwards did, but unfortunately the sequel is a mess and a bore. It was by far the longest two hours I've had to sit through in a movie all year. It tries to follow a similar premise as the original film by being an allegory of sorts, this time about American intervention in the Middle East and it too leaves the monsters as an afterthought. The soldiers are sent overseas to fight the monsters (which could easily represent the terrorists in our world) who have spread all the way to the Middle East, but in a way these soldiers become the real monsters. The allegory is heavy on this one and it doesn't quite work as well because it is too lazy and simple. The characters aren't interesting at all and no one stands out here. They even have to resort to using voice-over narration to introduce each character because there was no interest in character development whatsoever.

The sequel takes place several years after the original and now the monsters have spread through different parts of the world. At the same time, an insurgency has broke out in the Middle East and soldiers are being deployed to fight off the insurgents and destroy the monsters in that deeply infested area. Michael Parkes (Sam Keeley) grew up in Detroit and has been training in the military for the past two years along with his native friends: Frankie (Joe Dempsie), Karl (Kyle Soller), and Shaun (Parker Sawyers). They are all being deployed to the Middle East together and are ready to make a difference. After a few weeks of light fighting the recruits are sent on a mission with Sergeant Frater (Johnny Harris) to rescue some soldiers in the Infected Zone. This is where the real fight begins for the new recruits.

I can't complain about the aliens being simply a background for this clichéd anti-war film because it was the same thing in the first movie, but Dark Continent doesn't even take its time to develop interesting characters. The story is incredibly lazy and all the characters are unsympathetic. I felt the extremely slow pacing take its toll on me and I understood that it was trying to explore the human behavior in extreme conditions, but it did so in a very lazy way. The subtext here isn't nearly as provoking as it was in the original. I get it that Green is trying to show the irony of the world crumbling around us as we ignore it and still continue to destroy each other, but it simply didn't do anything for me.

http://estebueno10.blogspot.com/

The movie is called Monsters, but similar to the first, the monsters have so little to do with the story, even more so in the second than the first.

It's all about male bonding during military time as a platoon of boys from the same hood in Detroit go to war together in the Middle East.

The picture moves quickly, never a dull moment, very kinetic movement. Good action and lots of good war scenes.

The acting could used improvement. All the screaming and crotch grabbing did not convince me of their military standpoint.

But director Tom Green is definitely a good visual artist here. The imagery was very instance. Very good cinematography.

Visual effects were decent as well.

Total exploitation of war that ads a sci-fi fantasy elements with the monsters, used only as a backdrop no different than the dessert the movie takes place in.

Overall, I like the movie, despite how little the monsters have to do with the story at all. It seems misleading going into it, however.

It's 10 years after Monsters. In the Middle East, the US military struggles to fight both the monsters and insurgents. Staff Sgt Frater has served 17 years. In Detroit, best friends Michael Parkes, Frankie Maguire, Karl Inkelaar, and new father Sean Williams head off as green soldiers.

I don't know how much Gareth Edwards has to do with this production. I don't know if he could help as the director. It's not strictly the director's fault. It's more about the writing. It's a bunch of characters that I don't know and don't care about. The monsters are back but this is lifeless. One would think that the US military would draw back out of the Middle East to consolidate the homeland defense. After Monsters, a sequel should be about stemming the tide on American soil. The original was a happy surprise. This one is a disappointment but not necessarily a surprising one.