10 Greatest Monster Movies Of The 21st Century
3. Monsters
Gareth Edwards’s debut indie flick might get overlooked in favour of his 2014 Godzilla reboot, but Monsters is the superior film in almost every way. A great deal of its merits can be attributed to the restrictions imposed upon Edwards while making the film.
On a budget of under $500,000, Edwards and a small crew shot a piece of genuine guerrilla film-making, utilising locations without permission, and drafting in random extras off the street.
Edwards composed all of the film’s visual effects in his bedroom, using store-bought Adobe software, but thanks to some clever editing tricks and efficient use of lighting, you’d struggle to tell this wasn’t a much larger budget production.
The film borrows a lot of these tricks from Cloverfield (i.e. attempting to hide the monsters as much as possible, for the sake of dramatic tension), but in doing so it winds up being a much more emotionally rich film than JJ Abrams’s found-footage curio.
The relationship of our central characters, Andrew and Samantha, is the focus of the picture. The monsters simply serve as set-dressing for their journey of discovery and emotional turmoil.