Monsters: Dark Continent

Monsters: Dark Continent

Starring Johnny Harris, Sam Keeley, Joe Dempsie, Jesse Nagy

Directed by Tom Green

The Story:
Ten years after the original, the alien creatures are spreading across the world, and as the American army tries to stop them, they create an insurgency in the Middle East.  Frater (Johnny Harris) and Forrest (Nicholas Pinnock) have served nine tours there, where the insurgents are becoming more dangerous than the massive aliens.

In Detroit, down on his luck Michael (Sam Keeley), his equally deprived friend Frankie (Joe Dempsie), and two other friends decide to enlist in the army, since it's either that or deal crack on the mean streets.  They enjoy one final night of prostitutes and cocaine before deploying overseas, thinking they'll be killing some alien monsters, but instead find themselves fighting the insurgents with Frater and Forrest.

On one mission to locate four missing soldiers, the group comes under heavy attack, resulting in several fatalities and a mission that seems all but doomed, as the aliens continue to loom nearby.

The Synopsis:
Director Gareth Edwards released "Monsters" in 2010, his first outing as a director, and a film that's practically universally praised.  It was one of my favorites as well, as it not only centered around aliens, but was also a deeply intimate story of love, politics, and the will to survive.  Critics loved the film so much that it allowed Edwards to direct a big-budget blockbuster - "Godzilla."

It was because he was doing that movie that he couldn't return to direct "Dark Continent," but instead passed the torch to fellow first-time director Tom Green (not the comedian who was married to Drew Barrymore - but you'd be forgiven if you thought it was due to the unintentional comedy this film produced).  "Dark Continent" isn't a direct sequel as it doesn't feature any of the original cast, and it happens ten years later in a whole other part of the country.  The only constant between the two films are the giant alien monsters, but we'll discuss that in a bit.

The film seems like it wants to be another "American Sniper" or "The Hurt Locker," in that the film hardly even focuses on the monsters at all, but rather this war that's going on between the Americans and the unnamed Middle Eastern insurgents.  For some reason, the insurgents don't understand why Americans keep blowing their buildings up, despite the fact that there's stories-tall creatures just walking around, so they're pissed off and decide to fight Americans.  I guess the whole theory of the world coming together to destroy an extraterrestrial force was just a Reagan-era dream after all.

So we got the army.  Frater is pretty much a lock-step characterization of Jeremy Renner's character in "The Hurt Locker," portrayed as a rogue commander who stops at nothing to see the objective completed, and not listening to other leaders around him.  Although he does get results.

Then comes the F-troop Detroit rejects who want to kill monsters, and don't seem to have one brain between them.  In Detroit they're the tough thugs who beat up people and generally show total disregard for anyone, and once they set foot in the Middle East, they become bumbling morons who spend more time yelling and crying than actual fighting.  I felt bad for Frater, as he seemed more like a baby-sitter than a commanding officer.  It hurts the movie's case too in that each character is totally unlikeable and you spend most of the two hours rooting for their demise.

Two hours?  Yes.  Two hours.  Two hours of sheer boredom.  Because we're getting back to the monsters now.  With a title like "Monsters: Dark Continent," you'd expect the monsters to be front and center.

I can imagine a dialogue between two of the monsters at one point in the film:
Monster 1: "So the title of the film is 'Monsters: Dark Continent,' right?"
Monster 2: (Checking the script) "Yep, it says it right here."
Monster 1: "Then why are we way in the background?  I think I see the camera crew but they're so far away."
Monster 2: "I'm sure they're just doing some B-reel stuff.  I'm sure they'll be with us at any moment."
-Two hours pass-
Monster 2: "Or not."

For a film that has them in the title, there's not a whole lot of monsters being seen.  Not even a metaphorical "the army is the real monsters" can be applied, because as I said earlier, the new recruits spend more time crying than fighting.  The only spot of light this elongated film has is in its monsters, which have a very Lovecraftian design, and are downright terrifying in their own right, but they're regulated to the background, and you don't really know much about them.  For being on the Earth for over ten years, they should've taken over by now, but they seem content to just wander around and look menacing but not actually dealing out any real destruction.  This is a missed opportunity for a film that seems to want to focus on them.

The Summary:
For a two-hour film about monsters, you get about twenty minutes worth of them.  The remainder of the time is spent in a low-budget wannabe war movie featuring the worst recruits ever that are so unlikeable to root for their demise.

The Score: C-