“Monstrous” Film Review
By: Joseph Perry (Twitter - Uphill Both Ways Podcast)
Director Bruce Wemple’s Monstrous is a Bigfoot film of a different stripe. For potential viewers who have felt cheated when the legendary creature has been promised in movie ads but minimally delivered, if at all, fear not — the beast is on the rampage here, though suffice it to say that the film’s title doesn’t refer only to Sasquatch. Darker human elements are also at play, which makes this film more of a thriller than a creature feature.
Wemple, working from a screenplay by Anna Shields (who also stars as Sylvia), finds a solid balance between drama and chills in Monstrous. Shields’ script is full of believable dialogue and dark secrets. Her characters are well fleshed out.
Sylvia is a lonely young twentysomething whose friend Jamie (Grant Schumacher) is a Bigfoot enthusiast. Their mutual friend Haley (Catharine Daddario) disappeared in an isolated location in the Adirondacks area of New York. She is not the only person to vanish recently in that locale. Jamie learns that the woman Haley was last seen with, Alex (Rachel Finninger), is advertising, as she did when Haley responded, for a ride to the same place.
Reluctantly agreeing to a plan to follow behind Jamie’s car when he gives a ride to Alex, Sylvia instead has to drive the woman herself when Jamie falls ill. The two women fall in lust rather quickly, and this is when Monstrous begins to veer off for a while from cryptid territory to character study and dark thriller. The crackerjack performances from Shields and Finninger and Wemple’s skillful helming of the puzzle pieces in Shields’ screenplay elevate Monstrous to a satisfyingly different take on Sasquatch cinema rather than making it yet another entry in that subgenre that fails to deliver.
The practical effects makeup looks convincing and the monster suit looks good, too. Initially shown mostly during night scenes, the suit also gets its time in the sun, so to speak, and it shows some budgetary limitations then, but not enough to distract from the overall effect.
Monstrous is an independent horror offering that takes chances and pays off well with them. Wemple serves up some fine drama in tandem with a nice amount of shocks and surprises, aided by admirable performances and good storytelling.
Monstrous, from Uncork’d Entertainment, debuts On Demand and on DVD on August 11.
Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast (whenitwascool.com/up-hill-both-ways-podcast/) and Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast (decadesofhorror.com/category/classicera/). He also writes for the film websites Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), Ghastly Grinning (ghastlygrinning.com), and Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom).
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