THE MONSTER
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: Bryan Bertino directs a suspenseful horror film
about a mother and daughter stranded at night on a
deserted road. Their car is besieged by what might be a
wounded wolf or what might be what wounded it. They
have a very dysfunctional relationship and with
flashbacks we learn why. This film is an exercise in
suspense that does not always work, but still has a few
good scares for the audience. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4)
or 6/10

There is a popular sequence in a well-known science fiction or
horror film (let me be a little cagey here and try to avoid a major
spoiler). It would appear here that writer/director Bryan Bertino
adapted that sequence into an entire movie by replacing and
developing the characters and telling their background in
flashbacks. The basic situation and some of the ways to handle
scenes seem to have been borrowed from the previous film.

Kathy (played by Zoe Kazan) and her daughter Lizzy (Ella
Ballentine) have a relationship that is bad from the ground up.
Kathy is irresponsible and a substance abuser and estranged from
Lizzy's father, so Lizzy has previously taken the role of the adult
of the family. Now Lizzy is fed up and wants to go to her father,
and while Cathy does not like the idea, she is cooperating. Lizzy
wants to get there as soon as possible even if it means that Kathy
has to drive all night.

They are the only people on a back road when suddenly their car
hits something big and spins around smashing the driver's door. It
looks to be a wolf dead in the road, but a few minutes later the
wolf's body has disappeared. There must be something else on the
road, probably bigger than the wolf. And you guessed it: as the
mother and daughter learn to depend on each other the ice between
them melts. If it had not, the audience would not be so anxious to
have the two save themselves. At first neither person seemed worth
the effort to save. But each eventually realizes that the other
may be the key to her survival

The film is left with some long scenes of the beleaguered pair
facing off against something they can never get a good look at.
Scenes like these put the director on a knife-edge between keeping
the viewer in suspense and being tedious. Sometimes seeing too much
nothing in the progress in the story will lose the viewer or it may
just tighten the suspense. Here it does both. The film sometimes
works, though some pieces carry on too long.

Bertino does some decent exercise in atmosphere, e.g. sending the
car down dark Freudian roads lit only by a pair of headlights. He
largely introduces the whatsit just a bit at a time. The viewer is
left to question if he/she really saw what it looked like. Little
visual details are added slowly. [Incidentally, I saw the poster
after only after seeing the film and I would have been unhappy had
I seen them in the other order. The poster is a stupendous
spoiler. Take that as a warning.]

I rate THE MONSTER a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10. It is
of note that Zoe Kazan is the granddaughter of the great but
controversial film director Elia Kazan.

Film Credits:
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3976144/combined>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_monster_2016>


Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 2016 Mark R. Leeper

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