Should you watch this at weekend movie ticket prices? No.
Should you watch this at weekday movie ticket prices? If you watched “Monsters.”
Secret ending? No.
Running time: 119 minutes (~2 hours)
“Monsters: Dark Continent” is a science fiction war film that serves as a sequel to 2010’s “Monsters.” It sees a special ops team deployed to put down a group of human insurgents – that happen to be smack in the middle of a zone full of Monsters. It stars Johnny Harris (Frater), Sam Keeley (Michael), Joe Dempsie (Frankie), Jesse Nagy (Conway), and Nicholas Pinnock (Forrest). It is rated M-18.
“Monsters: Dark Continent” starts off with an intriguing premise that’s continued from the previous film. Perhaps the greatest strength of this film is its attention to world building and integrating its fantastic elements believably into the movie universe. Unfortunately, the rest of the film, especially the cinematic techniques, don’t fit quite as seamlessly together.
Highlights
Stylized sense of hopelessness
The atmosphere of despair and melancholy, particularly in the second half of the film, is done with an impressively stylized flair. It’s not just the dark tones and somber music that create this feeling, but a very deliberate focus to generate this tone that pairs itself well with the movie’s themes of war.
Gritty feeing works here with war
The gritty and realistic feel works in favour of the movie’s themes of war. You’d expect some level of over the top, brightly coloured action given that the premise of the film involves otherworldly monsters, but “Monsters: Dark Continent” actually keeps the world firmly rooted in the realities of war. This accentuates the theme of film and highlights the atrocities of war, lending an unexpected but worthy dimension to the movie.
Monsters are fun
The monsters aren’t only of the massive kaiju variety, as the posters proclaim, but also come in smaller variations. Of course, they’re all tentacled horrors, but the fact that not all of them are stomping on cities and villages makes them seem less cliche. They’re a part of everyday life now, and that makes the verisimilitude all the easier to accept.
Letdowns
Storytelling vanishes after the first half of the movie
The climax arrives in the middle of the movie – and then all narrative structure is lost after that. It becomes a series of events that have no direction nor purpose. This absolute collapse of storytelling technique means that the film effectively ends after the first hour. Watching the second 60 minutes brings neither catharsis nor closure to the movie.
It’s two different one-hour movies
While the visual style remains distinctly similar throughout, it’s the only aspect that indicates this is one whole movie. The midpoint marks such a drastic change in tone that it feels like an epic adventure in the first movie, and some pointless pilgrimage the next. It’s almost as if two different teams worked on the first and second halves of the film, with only the poor video editor left to reconcile the whole mess into one finished film.
Shaky hand held style is wildly inconsistent
The overuse of shaky camera works at times, but in many instances it goes into overdrive. It feels like the camera operator has multiple personality disorder when the hand held style is done realistically one minute and goes crazy the next. The action scenes are an especial offender, creating a nauseating and confusing experience in what should be a exciting and thrilling portion. And given that the main selling point of show is the action, the style does little to improve its watchability.
“Monsters: Dark Continent” is a heroic attempt to make a war movie with monsters in the backdrop, but suffers from such schizophrenic changes in direction that it comes off as a two thinly connected movies. Perhaps releasing this as two-parter would have served the film better, but there’s very little reason to watch the second half of the film in any case.
“Monsters: Dark Continent” opens in cinemas 23 April, 2015 (Thursday).
This review was also published on Yahoo Singapore.
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