Monsters Dark Continent

Although he laid a big radioactive goose egg with Godzilla (2014), director Gareth Edwards debut feature, Monsters (2010), was a clever character piece set amidst a laconic alien invasion as oversized creatures mysteriously stomped across every nation on Earth. It worked for several reasons: solid acting, believable writing and convincing special effects. But it didn’t scream for a sequel. Few movies ever do.

Yet Monsters: Dark Continent struggles to be a worthy successor, ambitiously combining the pathos of a modern war film with leftover herds of marauding aliens. It’s failure isn’t due so much to artistic overreaching, just misjudgment about who fans of the original film were in the first place.

Opening with a tight-knit squad of Detroit homies who ship out together to the Middle East, the film establishes itself as a metaphor for the Iraq / Afghanistan conflicts from frame one. In fact, with the creatures relegated to so much background noise, a few digital tweaks would turn Dark Continent into a straight-up war film with no sci-fi elements whatsoever.

In that respect, director Tom Green’s film is an admirably shot tour of duty. Nothing about it feels cheap or corny. And the no-name actors all perform way above their pay scale. The emotions may all be cranked to “11,” but at least we’re not dealing with a found footage format shot from someone’s body camera for two hours. As a sequel, Dark Continent actually looks better than the original, including the visual effects used to create its menagerie of alien beasties.

But it’s a tedious story, full of all the expected “boots-on-the-ground” clichés. Green manages to achieve a cultural balance that even major releases (yo, American Sniper!) don’t bother to include. Yet as his film lingers on (…and on…and on…) the lack of any driving narrative structure and the decision to make the monsters play even less of a role in the story eventually dooms the film. As disappointing as it is to say, Dark Continent’s choice to take the cinematic high ground was a strategic blunder.

The Blu-ray has a lot of home theater “wow” factor, though. Image quality is right up there with best new releases on the format. Extras are limited to a Making Of and theatrical trailer.