Monstrous

Laura (Christina Ricci) is a woman on the edge. As the story begins, she and her seven-year-old son Cody (Santino Barnard) arrive at a remote house in her immaculate teal station wagon. Her new landlords, Mr and Mrs Langtree (Don Baldaramos and Colleen Camp) are there to greet her. He takes a bit of a shine to Laura, but the missus has a bad feeling about her. Perhaps, we do too; if not exactly for her per se, but rather for her situation. As we piece together her backstory, we get the sense that she’s fleeing an abusive relationship. She’s fearful each time the phone rings and when she does give in and answer it’s either her demanding mother (Nancy O’Fallon) or her remorseful and apologetic husband, begging her to tell him where she and the boy are and to give him another chance. What makes her situation even more precarious is that it’s the 1950s, and the incidence of women taking the kid and leaving their abusive husbands is not too common and not yet socially acceptable. Oh, and one more thing: their new house is right by a spooky looking pond that holds a dangerous fascination for Cody - along with a monster (Amy Beer in a sodden monster suit) that keeps turning up in the kid’s bedroom at night with the intention of luring him down the path and into the water.

Or so it seems...

So far, so run-of-the-mill; except that it’s hard to shake the feeling that this very familiar, tropey set up is not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s not just Laura’s level of anxiety that’s heightened; the whole tone and atmosphere of this movie is a bit off kilter and way exaggerated, thanks to the real creative heroes of Monstrous, the design team including Production Designer Mars Feehery with Art Direction from Deprez and Ryan Martin, sets by Taylor Jean and Laura’s fabulous costumes by Morgan DeGroff. The iridescent colour palette and period objects, furniture and technology are perfect. But are they too perfect?

These things, together with a pretty good soundtrack of fifties songs and some good cinematography by Senda Bonnet create a nicely weird tone that underscores this movie. Add to that, some disturbing and difficult to decipher flashbacks and a vision or two of this perfect home in disarray along with the pond’s increasingly powerful pull on Cody and we’re pretty sure there’s something bad going on – but are these things premonitions or memories or something else entirely?

But don’t get me wrong; this isn’t a case of style over substance. There’s plenty to chew on in this film and I don’t mean the scenery. At its centre is a knockout performance by Ricci. She’s really the engine of the film navigating a fine line between parody and melodrama (the good kind!). Her anxiety is palpable and the smiling mask she creates to hide it is terrific. If, at times (like us), she seems as confused by some of what’s happening here, that only goes to increase the tension between what we see on the screen and what we don’t quite see on the screen. Her performance is well supported by Barnard as her son and well antagonised by Camp as the distrusting landlady. It’s a well-balanced dynamic that helps us trust that the cracks in the reality of the story will open up to us more fully by the time the credits roll.

Director, Chris Sivertson and screenwriter Carol Chrest seem to know what they’re doing with this film, and they build towards a twist that might not be shocking but, for me at least, was pretty satisfying. Looking at the tepid response by some other reviewers, I might be out here on my own, but I really went with this movie and was unperturbed by the way it tends to ignore the temptation to go full monster-horror in favour of something that is more intriguing and unsettling.

Sivertson is supposedly a fan of directors David Lynch, Brian de Palma and Alfred Hitchcock.  You can see that in small measure in the film’s touches of Lynchian design and surrealism and attempts at de Palmesque suspense (that almost gets there but not quite) - but where he really shows his Hitchcockian colours is in the psychology of Laura, her mix of paranoia and panic and, of course, in the way he creates a highly effective McGuffin – the creature that emerges from the pond in pursuit of Cody fulfills the requirements of that device admirably. For those wanting the monster to be more monstrous, this film may be a disappointment. But for those open to a film that deals with how monstrous our emotions and anxieties can be, then this movie may be just the ticket.

 

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