Love and Monsters
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
We are playing catch up by reviewing films that are a part of the current awards season.
At its core, Love and Monsters is really just a straight up action film, especially with its crescendos that work their way up towards riveting payoffs. It’s as calculated as any big budget Hollywood picture, but the main appeal is that it feels just ever so slightly different. There’s an indie-cinema sheen that covers it all; warmth and all. There’s a focus on the mission, which is a sincere quest: a survivor of a post-apocalyptic world will do anything to be with his girlfriend, who is far away (and might be off to somewhere else). Okay, so this isnt just any post-apocalyptic film. This is a universe where a chemical leakage has turned every cold-blooded animal into a gigantic, ferocious monster. Love and Monsters feels part A Quiet Place — with its sneaking around and changed world — and part tribute to the best monster pictures. Again, this is a warm feeling film, showing that director Michael Matthews and company never forgot the “love” part of the film’s title, even amidst all of the monsters.
As a story, Love and Monsters is incredibly basic, but that’s purely intentional. How much can you put into a tale like this, which so meant to be a bit of a spin on the action genre? Because of this, there’s only so much you can get out of this picture; one viewing was enough for me. However, that one viewing was quite something, because it was a nice change of pace. Sure, it exhibited every action film requirement, but it still felt like its own little deviation. Even the creatures themselves reminded me more of a work like Pokémon: Detective Pikachu than Transformers: the transmogrifications of beings we are familiar with, in ways we have not quite seen before (down to the tiniest details). There aren’t even that many creatures here, but the handful we get are fascinating enough, and Love and Monsters is clearly built around them.
The creature designs in Love and Monsters are all incredibly interesting.
You could imagine that a film like this would have also had more going on with its world building, but, like its story, this is relatively basic. On one hand, it’s a bit of a shame, because you just know that there is a possibility of so many different societal evolutions that could have been used, here; could you imagine all of the additional ways society could have adapted to survive this world? On the other hand, Love and Monsters doesn’t feel mundanely bloated like any of those Pirates of the Caribbean sequels or any of the Transporter works (narrative padding meant to surround just the thrills). So, Love and Monsters is a one-and-done deal, but it’s confident in what kind of film it is. Its action is quite good but definitely different in tone, and its story doesn’t really pretend it’s anything that it isn’t. Again, maybe this is the kind of film that should have been more expansive, but it’s still fun enough on its own.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.