Psychological horror film Monstrous is deadly…dull
Even with Christina Ricci on hand, the 1950s-set title can't scare up a compelling story
Film Reviews Monstrous
It seems vastly unfair to impute the onscreen creative failings of a movie to something as arguably innocuous as its credits, and perhaps in most cases that’s true. But in the instance of Monstrous, which tallies 41 (yes, 41!) executive producers (not counting four producers and seven other co-producers), the shoe seems to fit.
This inert psychological horror film is so extraordinarily dull and pointless on a purely narrative level that it feels like the product of endless financial horse-trading, tax shelter investment, and a thousand other compromises and accommodations. It’s easy to imagine Monstrous beginning its life, perhaps in the minds of screenwriter Carol Chrest or even director Chris Sivertson, as something exciting or unique. Unfortunately, it’s hard to imagine a more stillborn finished product, an exercise in tedium which checks the barest boxes of “completed movie” and possibly delivers unknown benefits for some of those executive producers, but otherwise offers nothing that might engage an audience.
Monstrous opens with Laura Butler (Christina Ricci) and her 7-year-old son Cody (Santino Barnard) packing up and moving to California. Ostensibly they’re fleeing Laura’s abusive husband, but there’s no great urgency or panic to their trip. The pair take up residence in a furnished rental home owned by the Langtrees (Don Baldaramos and Colleen Camp) in the middle of a vast rural expanse bordered by a pond.
Laura secures a generic office job with an equally generic boss, Mr. Alonzo (Lew Temple), and sets about trying to restore some sense of normalcy for Cody. Unfortunately, Cody is certain that a monster from the pond is visiting his room at their rented house. That monster, it turns out, is no figment of adolescent imagination—after a knotty, tendril-laden creature terrorizes him one night, Cody turns an emotional corner and starts adding it to family drawings, calling it/her the “pretty lady.” Laura seems a bit put off by this, but mostly is concerned with Cody just fitting in at school.
The key to engaging with almost any horror movie is understanding its vocabulary, as much as its story. Is it working in the shadows, or dabbling in the supernatural? Is it seeking primarily to viscerally jolt, or more to unnerve? Do we perhaps know the killer(s), or is the threat external and anonymous? Mash-ups, of course, blend modes of storytelling all the time, and aim to subvert expectation. That’s part of their fun.
Monstrous, though, simply does not seem to have a strongly developed, consistent idea of what it should be. For most of its run time it is chiefly invested, in bolded and underscored fashion, in airless evocation of the 1950s. This preoccupation extends all the way from Mars Feehery’s production design and Morgan Degroff’s costumes to a roster of radio music cues and its golly-gee dialogue (“I know that you and I are completely safe, like two bugs snug in a rug”), as if a period setting somehow magically elevates the story being told. All aspects of Chrest’s script exist to first service this function.
There are some hints, early on, of additional folds and layers, possible narrative twists in waiting. Laura has been taking medication, but might have stopped. She misnames a coworker in conversation with Cody. Then, late in the movie, she seems to have a drinking problem. But Monstrous has no structure or flow, and seems to exist only long enough to punch the clock and qualify for feature length.
Director Sivertson, whose credits include All Cheerleaders Die and the Lindsay Lohan thriller I Know Who Killed Me, has plenty of experience with the psychological and supernatural horror genres. Here, though, he wanly oversees a sort of ghost-ship production, one that lacks cohesive vision and the internal discipline of continuity. (There’s a scene where Laura emerges from an underwater nightmare sequence physically wet, but is then immediately dry in the next shot.) The movie’s special effects work is risible, though at least sparse. Editor Anjoum Agrama struggles with establishing any type of rhythm, and is apparently left to divine such basic concepts as atmosphere or tone on her own, resulting in scenes with a snooping neighbor coming off as alternately annoying and unaccountably menacing.
Ricci is a gifted actress, but she never locates a compelling through-line for her character here. She plays Laura as buttoned-up, neither harboring a great secret nor caught up in the undertow of something she doesn’t understand. The movie’s tagline (“The past can pull you under”), as well as a couple flashbacks to Laura in her adolescence, indicate a premise connected to trauma and grief, but Monstrous doesn’t unpack any of these issues in a way that is satisfying, or even substantive. Most damning, it doesn’t even seem to try. Bereft of scares, tension, unease, or any fleeting curiosity, the film offers nothing for a viewer to latch onto. But, hey, 41 people received an executive producer credit. Maybe there’s an actual story there.
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‘… which tallies 41 (yes, 41!) executive producers (not counting four producers and seven other co-producers)‘. Check out some of those cheapo direct-to-DVD / cable Bruce Willis offerings of recent years. Some of those have in excess of sixty ‘producers’ of various flavours. Little more than glorified crowdfunding.
Maybe start with a premise that isn’t the cliche of single/divorced woman moves to isolated, creepy rural home with her child/children. Seems like every second horror movie choice on Tubi has the exact same set-up. Horror movie via MadLibs.There’s also the premise of group of teens/20-somethings decide to party at/explore creepy crumbling mansion/island/abandoned asylum…terror ensues. Plenty of those to go around.
Well you see The Others was pretty good so we’re gonna be remaking it in one form or another until the end of time.
There are plenty of variations on that basic theme – The Others, The Orphanage, The Babadook, Dark Water, The Turn of the Screw, even The Exorcist. Unsettled parents being frightened of/for their children is at least as flexible of a premise as “super-strong people fight each other,” but the challenge is figuring out what makes the newest take interesting.
Right but The Others is specifically the ‘Mother alone with her kids in creepy country manor’ template.
What about the premise that a recently widowed woman moves to a rural country home and discovers that the entire town is Rory Kinnear?
Even more terrifying would be the entire population being Greg Kinnear.
i wouldn’t mind that!
See, why don’t they combine the concept? A group of teens/20-somethings decide to party with pretty divorcees at an isolated creepy rural home?
The dude who directed ‘I Know Who Killed Me’ is still getting work? Jesus Fucking Christ….
He’s also getting The Gentleman’s F. So there’s that too.
That’s the guy who made that movie? Bit of a disappointing followup to raising Lazarus from the dead and the miracle of the loaves and fishes!
it’s hard to imagine a more stillborn finished product1) gross2) how can something be “more stillborn” than something else?
2) that’s why it’s hard to imagine
it’s not a comparison to being literally stillborn, its a figurative use of the word that more so means the film didn’t have any creative energy or ideas going into it so it never had a chance of success
how is it figurative if it’s NOT a comparison to the original meaning?
I could clarify what I meant but then I realized this argument is literally pointless and I don’t care. Ok that was a lie I do care, I tried to be zen but I failed. Basically I mean that “stillborn” is used to refer to creative projects so often that it’s like not directly intended to be a metaphor, it feels more like the word has gained an alternate when used to describe projects like this. Like it’s not like the author of the article wanted to compare the movie to a still birth, it’s more like they used the common term for this type of creative failure, which is basically what I meant.
So is the real monster Christina Ricci? That would fit with some of her best work, like Lizzie Borden Chronicles and Yellowjackets
The real monster is the friends we made on the way.
I have a running joke with a friend of mine that the quality of a film can be judged by the number of production companies listed at the start of the film. We’re both drawn to indies and other non-mainstream films, so having a bunch of production companies usually means the film was hard to finance and is thus going to be interesting and appealing to us. Guess this movie can finally buck this trend lol. Also, worth noting the first company listed (out of 7, only two of which even have Wikipedia pages) is Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, Inc. Yes, THAT Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, Inc. Exactly what I think of when I think of psychological horror.
Minor quibble: did boys have the first name “Cody” in the 1950s? (he was presumably born in the late 1940s)My understanding is that Cody was largely a last name until the 1970s, following a general later 20th century trend of first-nameifying last names, like Garrett, Blake, and Mason.
A couple former 50s born football players for you:Cody Jones (b. 1951):https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/J/JoneCo00.htmCody Risien (b. 1957):https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/R/RisiCo00.htmAnd a fun chart showing the popularity of the name throughout the years:https://babynames.com/name/cody
It is certainly *more* common now, but there were people like the pioneering civil-rights lawyer Cody Fowler (1892-1978) so the name existed even in the 19th century.
Im not sure how I managed to finish the film.. probably because I kept telling myself SOMETHING of importance had to happen at some point right? Nope. Total snore fest that didn’t really have any plot, story, or reason to even be made. A shame because I did like Ricci in Yellow jackets.