“Monsters are afraid of the light.”
This was a rough one. The Monster is an accomplished piece of filmmaking, beautifully shot, and anchored by two terrific lead performances. But none of that prepares one for just how emotionally harrowing the film is. Heartbreak runs throughout every scene, and the naked emotionality on display is sometimes harrowing to watch. This is a film with huge stakes, palpable throughout, and the narrative heft produced make this stronger, sadder, and more complex.
The Monster is a slow burn – which is intentional. It really lets us get to know its principal characters intimately. Kathy (Zoe Kazan) is a kind of deadbeat mom, oversleeping and drinking too much; her daughter, Lizzie (Ella Ballentine) is mature for her age, which she has to be. While Kathy sleeps, Lizzie cleans up, throwing away beer bottles, emptying ashtrays, scrubbing dishes. She has to wake her mom up; Kathy promptly falls back to sleep. Lizzie is mature for her age, because she has to be. Thankfully, the script (by Bryan Bertino, who also directed) doesn’t take her into the well-trod and frankly tiresome territory of the precocious child. Through Ballentine’s incredible performance (more on that later), we see Lizzie as a girl resentful of the fact that she’s had to grow up so fast. She hangs on to a teddy bear almost defiantly.
Kathy is driving Lizzie to her dad’s house, where she’ll spend and indeterminate amount of time with him and his new wife. Well, that’s the idea anyway, but Kathy knows permanence when it’s looking her in the face. Kathy, too, tries to hide her emotions behind a tough veneer. She’s mostly successful, insulated in a caustic shell and numbed by alcohol and cigarettes, but through Kazan’s performance we can see she’s devastated. In her heart, she knows she isn’t a good mom, but with her daughter’s permanent departure, she’s forced to ask herself if she’s even a good person.
The premise is simple: the car breaks down on a rainy night, and there’s something in the woods. In its construction, The Monster is akin to a siege movie, which we love here at 31 Days of Fright. Bertino withholds the titular monster for a while, but we do get to see its handiwork in the form of an eviscerated wolf. Nestled in its fur is a broken fang, far bigger than a wolf’s would be. Bertino does a lot of table-setting, painting Kathy and Lizzie into a hellish corner. Kathy’s phone gets locked in a tow truck, for instance, and what could seem like a contrivance makes total sense in execution.
This is largely a talky movie wearing the coat of a horror film. Interspersed throughout are horrific, heart-wrenching flashbacks wherein we see just how fraught this mother-daughter relationship is. Scares notwithstanding, these scenes are The Monster at its most creative and shocking. My mouth dropped when a frustrated Kathy yells “Fuck you!” at her daughter. Then she says it again. And again and again.
Zoe Kazan is phenomenal in this. Usually cast as mousier characters (as in Olive Kitteredge or The Ballad of Buster Scruggs), Kazan plays Kathy like a cactus or a spiked fence, something that will hurt you if you get too close. But Ballentine is the real revelation here. It must have been a grueling shoot for her (she was 15 at the time of shooting), having to tap what must be an extraordinarily deep reservoir of emotion. Ballentine is perfect in every scene; that might sound hyperbolic, but watch the movie and tell me I’m wrong. Lizzie is put through hell in The Monster, and Ballentine rises to the challenge with aplomb.
The place where the film falters – the only place, really – is in the monster itself. The design isn’t the most original or striking; it kind of looks like Venom if he were a quadruped. (Nothing in modern horror will top the monster from The Ritual.) Beyond that, at times the CGI doesn’t hold up, and looks like something out of a video game. But it’s fearsome nonetheless, and the kills are suitably gruesome. Slight misgivings about the monster are not enough to keep me from recommending the film, though. If you’re looking for a classic monster movie, this isn’t it. But it’s a whole lot more.
10/1: Hellraiser / The Invitation
10/2: Splice / Banshee Chapter
10/3: Jennifer’s Body / Raw
10/4: Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist / Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
10/5: Kill List / A Field in England
10/6: Halloween II / Halloween III: Season of the Witch
10/7: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge / A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
10/8: Ginger Snaps / Creep
10/9: Cube / Creep 2
10/10: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) / The Ritual
10/11: Hell House LLC / The Taking of Deborah Logan
10/12: Re-Animator / From Beyond
10/13: Beetlejuice / Sleepy Hollow
10/14: Idle Hands / The Lords of Salem
10/15: The Ring / Noroi: The Curse
10/16: I Know What You Did Last Summer / The Monster
10/17: Night of the Living Dead / Train to Busan
10/18: The Devil’s Backbone / Southbound
10/19: Event Horizon / Dreamcatcher
10/20: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari / The Bad Seed
10/21: Eyes Without a Face / Goodnight Mommy
10/22: The Strangers / The Strangers: Prey at Night
10/23: In the Mouth of Madness / The Void
10/24: The Amityville Horror / Honeymoon
10/25: Gerald’s Game / Emelie
10/26: The Monster Squad / Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/27: Veronica / Jacob’s Ladder
10/28: High Tension / You’re Next
10/29: The Innkeepers / Bug
10/30: The People Under the Stairs / Vampires
10/31: Saw / Saw II
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