Monster

I recently watched the Indonesian film 🇮🇩 Monster (2023) on Netflix. The storyline follows two friends who are kidnapped after school, thrown into a trunk, and driven to a remote mountainside shack. One of the friends manages to escape, but instead of fleeing, she sneaks back into the house to try and rescue her friend from the monster...

Directed by Rako Prijanto (The Clerics), the film stars Marsha Timothy (The Raid 2), Alex Abbad (The Raid 2), Anantya Kirana (Beautiful Pain), and Sultan Hamonangan (Tira).

Monster is a film with a solid concept that could have been executed better. The opening does a great job of setting up the circumstances, with a strong atmosphere and minimal dialogue that suits the premise. However, while the setup is effective, the intensity is lacking. The horror and torture elements fall short, with a chainsaw sequence that could have been much more impactful. The storyline and conclusion are fairly straightforward and predictable.

In conclusion, Monster has a solid premise but stumbles in its execution. I would rate it a 5/10 and recommend it only with tempered expectations.

Okay, that is a tiny bit unfair, but given that most of their mainstream horror output is from legendary copy/paster Rocky Soraya, I feel like it's an appropriate joke. Monster is an Indonesian adaptation of The Boy Behind the Door, though with everything applied in a way that doesn't work quite as well when put together..... The visuals are the only good part, with some great shots and an overall suspense building aesthetic focusing on close and tight shots. There are even some well bits of swivel work that are done more than well enough, and the practicals have some satisfactory blood and violence to them. The killer doesn't really have any menace, but I feel like that's more in the overall acting and writing..... Speaking of which, the writing is one of the more lacking elements. While the lack of dialogue is a good choice, the story is very formulaic, with no actual surprises and no attempt at originality. There's very little to the characters too. No real substance to speak of..... The soundtrack feels out of tune. There's this odd western tune that always takes the viewer out of the scene, as well as some composed bits that are never timed right and never properly fit. While the sound effects work well enough, there isn't enough effort placed on them for sinister and/or unsettling effects..... The acting isn't great. The two kids, played by Anantya Kirana and Sultan Hamonangan do as good as they can, but their facial expressions are limited to either mild terror or high levels of fear, while the other two just go through their motions. The antagonists aren't exactly spooky or creepy, they're just annoying.

If you want to find out for yourself, Monster is on Netflix. If you want to save time and effort, just watch The Boy Behind the Door.

I am a fan of the idea of having a film use no dialogue. (Characters only sometimes say the names of other characters, so at least the main actors are more likely to get fairly compensated as speaking parts.) I don't mind the campy fake blood as long as there is suspense and a good storyline. Cinematography definitely had good moments of creating suspense. Only twice in the film did I find myself in a moment that seemed laughable and took me out of my immersion. One was a "The Shinning" spoof of the "Here's Johnny" scene that played out impressively well, especially by a young child actress in the place of Duvall, but even in its abbreviated form, the scene is just too long to not be a bit dull and out-of-place. The other moment was when our main character stops herself from stealing some french-fries left behind by an antagonist and pouts. I can see how they intended to make this a moment of showing human-ness and generating pity for the child, but it instead came off as an out-of-place moment of levity. I can forgive those things however. The thing that really irked me was the stereotypes used to depict the "badguy" archtype; Joint-smoking, beer-drinking gamer playing violent MMO shooters late into the night, has long unkempt hair and a black baseball cap or hoody with open jacket and ripped jeans, sustaining on cup noodle and fast food, neglecting an otherwise gorgeous home that is taken for granted and absolutely infested with cockroaches. And let's not forget this is supposed to be a child predator. It's just hitting every checkmark for a bad stereotype. When we got our second villain in the story, things started to pick up with suspense.

"Monster" is an okay movie, I guess. Wait, on second thought, it's not that great. It starts out as a rather unpleasant watch. Then after while, it gets repetitious. It never gets boring but it does get stuck in second gear. The first half of the movie is better than the second half. The no dialogue is fine for a while but then it ends up being a silly, rather ineffective gimmick. For a movie with a very friendly running time (86 minutes), "Monster" begins to feel like a long movie. 86 minutes long or not, it should have been about twenty minutes shorter. "Monster" is another straight-to-Netflix dud.

Monster (2023) is a remake of the 2020 movie "The Boy Behind The Door" and while that movie was nothing spectacular but pretty decent, this one is just an absolute mess. Two children are being abducted and wake up in a secluded cabin with their captor lingering around. After the little girl manages to free herself prepare to shake your head continually. The decisions made in this movie are absolutely terrible. While you could excuse the children for being young and not knowing better this does not apply to the villains. There are so many scenes where the Threat doesn't even feel real because of these decisions made. The movie also doesn't have dialogue which does not contribute in making this any better. The movie had some decently tense situations and there was a small potential hidden somewhere in this, however the overall execution is rather laughably. [4,5/10]