13 May Monstrous Review

MONSTROUS

dir. Chris Sivertson, starring Christina Ricci and Santino Barnard

In the 1950s American west, Laura and her seven year old son, Cody, drive to a remote home in California to flee from her abusive ex husband. The family is threatened by the possibility of his return as well as the presence of a monster lurking in a nearby lake.

As a supernatural thriller, Monstrous will go down as one of the year’s worst. A halfway decent setup is burdened by an anemic script and uninspired direction. Laura, on the run from her ex, establishes herself and her son in a new city while renting a house on the property of an elderly couple. As Laura and Cody attempt to build a new life, Cody struggles to make friends in the new town and is attracted to a supernatural presence that repeatedly surfaces from the lake next to their house. Cody’s fascination with this being takes its toll on Laura as her life unravels, leading to a third act reveal that would’ve been monumental if this film had been released prior to 1999.

Starring Christina Ricci, her performance is hamstrung by writer Carol Chrest. Doing the best with what she has to work with, Ricci delivers a strained, barely kept together woman fighting to create a new life for her and her son. It’s through these strained, almost forced takes that Ricci does some decent work, but the veteran actress is capable of delivering far better outings than what’s seen here. With a scene or two of brilliant work, the rest of the movie undercuts those scenes, ultimately showing Ricci as an uneven actress in an uneven movie.

I’m never one to harshly judge or criticize young actors, but Santino Barnard is downright awful in this film, bringing a cardboard performance of a character whose essence is necessary to carry the film’s subtleties. Monstrous would’ve been better served with a more established young actor able to play both the sweet and disturbing aspects of the character. Barnard fumbled both, unfortunately, and his acting is distracting enough to pull audiences out of the movie completely. The saving grace of the film is the fact that while Cody is the linchpin to the story, luckily the focus is on how the events affect Laura.

Directed by Chris Silvertson, Monstrous suffers from the fate of having a possibly interesting moving carefully tucked away inside of the pedestrian one we’re given. Featuring a turn that happens with mere minutes left to go in the movie, the film presents the opportunity of a rewatch to see what clues were left, but the overall presentation is uninteresting enough to make the promise of said rewatch fully inviting. At a scant 98 minutes, the languid pacing leads to a rushed third act that simultaneously answers questions and leaves the viewer scratching their head in confusion. Credit must be given to the costuming and production design, however, as the teams strived to nail the 1950s aesthetic and do so in bombastic fashion. Ricci’s Laura is always snappily dressed in immaculate matching dresses and tops, while the few men in the movie are decked out in the tweed frippery of the era. Their house, the main setting in which the story unfolds, is given a fine eye to detail, helping to build a world that is so familiar an Americana of a particular generation. The biggest frustration is that these smartly crafted elements are the only real highlights the film has going for it.

Overall, Monstrous is a watered down pass at what tries to be a thriller. The film’s attempts at tricking the audience into a third act reveal fall short, mostly due in part to the lackluster setup and performances of our main actors. A far cry from Christina Ricci’s best work, Monstrous does her no favors with its weak script and bland direction. Brandishing a premise that, while covering previously trod ground, could still be mined for some great character work, fails to invest the audience into why they should care about Laura or Cody, or the situation they find themselves in. With enough dangling plot threads that could hang Manute Bol, what’s displayed on the screen is underwhelming in almost every sense of the word. I liked it better when it was called The Sixth Sense. Monstrous is currently playing in select theaters and on demand.

Review by Darryl Mansel