Gareth Edwards
Monsters

Overlooked, underpublicized, almost ignored amidst the chaos of the modern film market. I'm talking about "Monsters," a film released in 2010, by a filmmaker who was and still is fairly unknown, Gareth Edwards.

The film is set in Mexico and America, divided by a massive concrete barrier, meant to keep the "monsters" out of U.S. soil. Andrew (Scoot McNairy) is tasked by a wealthy and powerful man to bring his daughter Sam (Whitney Able) home, across the barrier. A complicated, existential journey, a true odyssey teetering between salvation, returning to "normality," and the end of everything.

Edwards' cinematic backdrop is frankly overused because those "monsters" are nothing more than aliens who came to Earth: they closely resemble the ones seen in Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," but then again, a film like this has many (perhaps too many) references and "putative fathers": you might also mention "E.T.," or "District 9," "Cloverfield," and "The Road," but the substance doesn't change: little originality for a film that manages not to be trivial.

Edwards crafts a work in continuous search for detail, demonstrating that he can handle the camera with remarkable ease. It is noteworthy that the visual success of the film owes much to the cinematography, also done by Edwards. But what is most surprising about this feature film is the multi-layered integration of social, environmental, human themes, which rarely manage to express themselves in a science fiction film. This aspect takes center stage in this atypical "on the road," where the purely horrific, or if you like "science fiction," scenes are marginal and devoid of the spectacle of recent years (though it is also worth noting a tight budget, which probably contributed to making the film so "pared down"). To conclude it all is a story of veiled love, made of fears and unspoken things. The two actors, although unknown to most, perform their roles excellently, finding themselves in the difficult situation of having to bear the entire "weight" of the film together for its entire duration.

"Monsters" is an interesting product, which, also due to some obscurantism, flew under the radar. It is difficult these days to find a film that knows how to combine entertainment, reflection, and at the same time enhance it with quality and simplicity.