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.

"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.

I enjoyed this movie for what it was it's kept me engaged and it was suspenseful. I don't think people can handle the lack of dialog but I thought the actor's performance was good I didn't have to have dialog to understand what was going on and enjoy the movie. The little girls is such a baddie! My only complaint was the music was a little misleading sometimes. Example sometime it sounded like someone was knocking on the door when they weren't, but over all it was a decent flick. If you like suspenseful movies I say give it a go, the jump scares were predictable if horror is you genre but overall fun watch.

I don't hate the idea of a film having no dialog. Monster is as simple as a concept as it gets, and realistically, dialog wouldn't be a major aspect of the story anyway. No, the biggest flaw with Monster isn't the LACK of sound, it's the EXCESS of sound.

I just saw Challengers and that was a movie where sound design and mixing were a major aspect of what made it great. This is an example of a movie where the sound design is truly awful. It was a droning, crackling score that initially had me wondering if my TV speakers were broken. (Thankfully, no...I moved to another TV to finish the movie and it was the same situation)

This droning score plays through the ENTIRETY of the movie and it's unbelievably annoying. Not to forget about the score, which is so melodramatic and intrusive that it veers into very corny territory. Music is so important because it can set or ruin a film's tone. Here, the over dramatic music and over use of a terrible score made this film feel cheaper than it needed to. The last time sound made me feel so negatively about a movie was probably Tenet.

As for non-auditory aspects, I think it's fair to warn people that Monster is a very dark movie that follows two children as they attempt to escape a child murderer. Given that...I do wish we did get SOME dialog. It's such a disturbing premise that some levity and humanity on screen would be welcome. Some explanation as to what's going on? What the larger story is here? Or even some of the motivations of the admittedly detestable adults we see in the film would add a layer of intrigue here aside from the relatively compact story we see on screen.

I generally like to support foreign films and go a bit easier on them, but I think Monster needed some tweaking to actually work. As of now, it's a forgettable and undercooked film.