3. It Pretends It's More Deep Than It Actually Is
Have you ever had one of those friends whose really bad at pretty much everything, yet he constantly praises himself, like he's a gift from the gods and the greatest thing mankind has ever seen? If that person transformed into a movie, I'm pretty sure it would be "Monsters." The pretentious direction and plot of the movie, as well as the environments and scenes give the impression that this film is telling you more than what it's really saying, which is a big problem for a movie like this because the more you look at it the more you get the impression that it's nothing but the empty shell of a good movie. The only way to describe it is as a boring, slow film that goes absolutely nowhere. While there's a bit of symbolism in some parts of the movie (especially at the final scene) none of it is strong enough to warrant the incredibly dull pacing of the movie. Symbolism and metaphors work in a movie where there are strong characters that move the story forward who face problems that change their lives, it won't work on a film in which the characters do absolutely nothing and have little to no interaction between them. There's absolutely nothing to it, I would've rather to see a film with a simple cinematography and a little to no environment as well as it had a good plot, or character or if something happened in it. What makes matters worse is that the film even changes its genre not once, but 4 times throughout the movie. It's a love story at the beginning, it's a monster movie in the second act, the third one is a survival film, and in the end is a post-apocalyptic movie. It doesn't know what kind of a movie it want's to be, which is a big problem we see in many other elements of the movie; the camera work for example is definitely one of the worst I've seen in my whole life. For the first 30 minutes of the movie I thought it was a found footage movie based on the ridiculously annoying shaky-cam it had. While movies like Transformers or Cloverfield have a valid excuse for it, Monsters doesn't have any good excuse for it. Now that I'm thinking about it, I think Monsters would've been much more effective as a found footage movie. For once it would have an excuse for a shaky-cam while two people are sitting on a Pyramid near the U.S. Border (Let me tell you a little secret: There are no pyramids at the north of México, not a single one) and it would've made the character development a bit more interesting.