Directed by Michael Matthews and on the way out this 14th April on Netflix, this review wants to tell you about Love and monsters, a film that builds its own narrative taking into extreme consideration the past of the genre to which he refers, tending to impregnate it with a series of messages and delicacies that bode well for the works that will involve this director. Even if at first the lightness general to incardinate its developments may not surprise that much, we must always remember that it is a work that does not want to engage the viewer too much, drawing a series of events emotionally sincere from start to finish.
The Love and Monsters review took us back in time
Why are we talking about past in this review of Love and Monsters? Why use such a word to describe a film that instead focuses heavily on the general "freshness" of its developments? Simple, because this word wallows deeply in the narrative structure that the film has to offer. The plot revolves around a young man named Joel Dawson (Dylan O'Brien), and develops into the world post-apocalyptic with familiar features (see The Walking Dead and many other similar products). Virtually humanity has caused, in its hunger for power and fear, a genetic disaster worldwide that has forever changed the genetic matrices of insects and amphibians. Now Joel's daily reality is inhabited by these indescribable monstrosities that have destroyed all forms of human civilization and settlements. In response to all of this there is only chaos and terror. Man, to save himself, has therefore withdrawn into some underground shelters, in some colonies in which to try, in extremis, to survive what is happening.
It is precisely in such a context that the narration of Love and Monsters begins, a narrative that finds at its center a protagonist stuck in a colony and without particular personal skills. A introverted who has not yet understood how to get by on his own, far from the image of the fearless hero who faces everything head on, or from the genius who analyzes everything by reworking it from his own point of view. Joel is a normal guy, indeed quite normal, and for this very reason right when you want to build a certain type of identification with the viewer. However, the construction of the surrounding reality remains fundamental, narrated through a certain type of nostalgia that draws, even positively, from products that in the past have already faced narrative contexts of the genre.
In addition to all this we find the main input of the story. Joel's story will be told in excerpts, with enough depth Quick e simplistic in his describing it. This, however, gives the writers the opportunity to show another key character, which we absolutely must talk about in this review of Love and Monsters, namely Aimee (Jessica Henwick). Aimee is the girl Joel is in love with and with whom he wanted to build something before the so-called apocalypse. However, the situation led them to split up, staying in contact for years through one radio, the only direct link between their respective colonies. They will be the feelings of the boy towards her to start all the plot events, setting up what we could define as a sort of “Road - Survival movie”.
The importance of travel
Il journey remains one of the central elements of Love and Monsters, as well as one of his instruments best to tell not only the vicissitudes of the protagonist, but those that involved the entire planet earth. In fact, the film develops precisely through it, through this extremely dangerous experience in a world that does not discount anyone. Here the journey becomes something else, it becomes reflection and in-depth analysis of present, it becomes something a little more internalized in the experience itself, personal, of the boy who has to learn to fend for himself in the outside world. In addition to all this, this journey also becomes a means by which experience on the world that breathes around him. The various monsters, the characters he meets and their characterization, the photographic and aesthetic construction of the various sets, the soundtrack and some jokes, inevitably connect the film to many other products that have moved their steps in the same genre and narrative context.
Here, however, we always talk about an extremely product light. Of a work that touches always the tragic nature of one's genre without ever delving into it, without ever pressing too hard on the strongest themes, which see all the individual characters involved and marked in front of the camera. However, the path they have decided to take remains interesting, especially when it comes to target to which the film is aimed. The lightness, however, must not be misleading, also because despite its graceful movement, the film on several occasions focuses its attention on the inner dynamics of the characters represented.
An inhospitable world that would have much more to say
One of the flaws greater than this Love and Monster resides precisely in world where the plot is set. It doesn't actually reside in the world itself, but rather in the way we are told it's explained. Many things, also related to the characters themselves, are curiously given for discounted, and therefore dealt with without a minimum depth. Of course, the plot events would suggest some important steps forward for the future, but the simple fact that the details of the setting itself are addressed from the point of view of the protagonist, and that the camera follow continuously without never dwell on anything else, in the long run it could also putty or annoy, given the potential of what is in front of you. On the one hand, this choice helps to inspire a still open fascination, but on the other hand it wastes a gigantic unexpressed narrative potential that deserves to be told in detail.
From a technical point of view there is not much to say. The alternation of the CGI with the use of physical elements is interesting, even here extremely nostalgic and curiously appreciable. The general pace is never slow, even if from a certain moment on it begins to speed up too much. With this Love and Monsters it remains to clarify what are the main intentions of its director and screenwriters, it remains to understand the potential of a story that still has a lot to say and that in posing some of its scenes is, unfortunately, still immature in speaking to the viewer, with small falls in style that could have been easily avoided. We are therefore talking about a product that makes its own vicissitudes a plot without too many pretensions, but that knows how to entertain until the end, also giving some ideas that we hope, one day, someone will take the trouble to deepen.
