Here’s the new trailer for Gareth Edward’s “Monsters” which is getting a bit of hype on the geek blog circuit. I saw this one at the Los Angeles Film Festival and have an opinion, of course, but you can read that after seeing the trailer. I will say, though, that this is a very well done trailer but if you’re going in expecting to be hugely terrified or wanting to see anything like an ordinary monster film, you’re probably not going to like it. The R rating — if memory serves, is primarily for cursing and mild “sexuality,” not all of it human.
H/t /Film and here’s the official “Monsters” site.
Here’s what I wrote after the festival:
Ever wonder what would happen if an old fifties monster movie like the George Pal “War of the Worlds” decided to concentrate on characterization and its romantic subplot, and kind of let the rest of the story take care of itself? This mostly improvised film from effects guy/writer/director Gareth Edwards is actually a lot more like ur-rom-com “It Happened One Night” than the film it’s most frequently compared to, “District 9,” as it focuses on a tough-guy news photographer (Scoot McNairy) escorting the beautiful-but-engaged daughter of his media mogul boss (Whitney Able) across a Mexico plagued by giant squid monsters. It’s not nearly as funny as it sounds — it’s not really meant to be, nor is it as compelling as Newsweek critic-turned-programmer David Ansen was claiming, though there are some interesting political echoes.
It is, however, gorgeously imagined and, including the somewhat comically old-school squid monsters, something of a visual miracle considering what appears to have been a minimal budget. Nevertheless, Edwards concept of basically filming where he could and then trying to shoehorn those stolen locations into a storyline with entirely improvised dialogue, doesn’t even come close to flying dramatically. His shoehorning of effects worked better.
UPDATE: Merrick prefers the UK trailer. Whether or not it’s better as its own experience, I could go either way as both trailers are very good. Still, it’s also very nice and it is, in fact, much truer to the real spirit of the film, which for better and for worse is much more arthouse than grindhouse. See it after the jump.
