Monsters

*** - It’s either the very near future or an alternate recent past (it’s never made clear which) and NASA has found evidence of life elsewhere in the solar system. Naturally, they decide to send up an exploratory probe to collect samples, but when the craft returns to Earth and crashes in Mexico all hell breaks loose. Well, all hell breaks loose after the life forms that were apparently on the craft gestate and turn into 300-foot tall giant walking squid monsters over a period of six years. That’s the premise behind this nifty little low-budget British-made 2010 sci-fi film starring no one in particular. In the midst of this accidental alien incursion - which has resulted in the quarantine of a large swath of northern Mexico and the southwestern US – the daughter of a media mogul is trapped on the Mexican side of the ‘Infected Zone’ and a rather goofy and non-heroic photographer in the gentleman’s employ is hired out to bring her back to the States. The film follows the pair’s journey full of hardships through jungles, lakes, rivers, burned-out villages and overgrown wastelands as they try to make their way back home. I think what I like most about the movie is that it has a lot more of a realistic feel to it than most of these types of movies. It is full of shady characters that are unjustly profiting off of the disastrous conditions, desperate families trying to reach safety and paranoia-crazed unfeeling government entities that overreact with much unnecessary kneejerk violence. While the monsters themselves seem rather dubious and the special effects are limited it is a movie that remains pretty enjoyable to watch even though it doesn’t really go anywhere.