Day 18 - Monsters (2014)
Platform:
Borrowed from OverDrive.
Quote:
“Excuse me, have you seen anyone else?
Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack! Ruff!”
Synopsis:
In a near future, giant alien lifeforms have created a dystopian, if not post-apocalyptic, world. A photojournalist, hoping to get some award-winning shots of the creatures, is hired to help get his editor’s daughter back home safely.
Review:
This was an interesting Kai-ju style film. It follows the traditional formula of focusing on humans trying to survive in a world of giant monsters. Our main characters traveling through quarantine areas in an attempt to get back to the safety of well-structured civilizations uncover human drama seeing how people live in the shadow of the monsters, and also come to learn more about the creatures than anyone else. The element that makes this one a little different than your standard Godzilla or Pacific Rim film is that the monsters are really background threats for the most part. They appear occasionally, and while you can tell what the creatures are like pretty easily, they don’t get much focus until the very end.
The film is fairly entertaining if not much of a horror film, though there is plenty of foreboding throughout as the main couple dodge both the creatures and the military forces attempting to drive the creatures away. There’s plenty of good action sequences, but the octopi/cthuluesque creatures don’t have quite the impact that I had hoped. They aren’t so large that they could rampage through a city like Godzilla. It puts me more in the mind of the giant bugs from Starship Troopers.
The good elements in this are good enough, and the bad elements aren’t damning, and it’s a different kind of monster movie. That’s enough for me to give this a mild recommendation.
Movie Count:
New = 13
Total = 18
OverDrive Breakdown: OverDrive is a digital platform that you can use to borrow ebooks, audiobooks, comics, graphic novels, and movies. Unlike Hoopla, you can't download videos. They must be streamed. Also, you don't have the casting option. But both Hoopla and OverDrive can be accessed via web browser so you can watch on your computers. Another drawback is that you don't have unlimited access to videos, so if someone else has it borrowed, you do have to place a hold and wait for them to either return the material or for their loan to time out. Plus sides are the ease of borrowing. You have a set number of titles of any format (book, audio, video, etc.) that you can borrow from at any point in time (my library is set at ten), but once you return a title, you get that borrow back. So, unlike Hoopla, you don't have to wait for the next month to start borrowing again. Also, even if you have to place a hold, the longest loan period on a video is seven days, and then most videos expire 48 hours after you start watching, so the turnaround time is very quick. OverDrive will also email you notifications when your hold is ready.
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