Love and Monsters is a movie where I just watched it because it had “Monsters” in the title. I love monster movies and since new movies coming out are rare, I gave it a watch. The premise is simple “Seven years after the Monsterpocalypse, Joel Dawson (Dylan O'Brien), along with the rest of humanity, has been living underground ever since giant creatures took control of the land. After reconnecting over the radio with his high school girlfriend, Aimee, who is now 80 miles away at a coastal colony, Joel begins to fall for her again. As Joel realizes that there’s nothing left for him underground, he decides to venture out to Aimee, despite all the dangerous monsters that stand in his way”. So was this movie a “monster” good time or a large-bore?
Firstly, the characters are all great. Joel Dawson (Dylan O'Brien) is a very frightened and nervous individual but gradually grows more confident as the movie progress which is done convincingly. Later on, in the movie Joel meets two survivors on the surface, Clyde (Michael Rooker) and Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt), who eventually teach Joel the ropes on surviving. Clyde is the cool teacher and Minnow is the very loveable sidekick. The best addition to this movie is the pet dog “Boy” who goes with our main character Joel on his journey. “Boy” adds an extra layer to this movie by giving Joel, and the audience, someone to care about on the journey and leads to some intense moments. The director, Michael Matthews, made a great choice in including a companion for Joel as the movie wouldn’t have hit the same notes if it was just him. Also, dog companions are great anyway. There are some other characters like Aimee (Jessica Henwick), Joel’s goal, and they are all pretty good as well.
I do have to give a lot of praise to Dylan O'Brien as he is very charming and charismatic despite playing a kind of nerdy loser type character. He makes Joel seem very relatable and successfully makes us root for him. There are also some surprisingly emotional moments sprinkled in this movie and Dylan’s performance is very good, to say the least in making us feel for him. There also some comedic moments and quips from our main character that for the most part land and none of it takes us out from the emotional core of the movie.
Let’s talk about the monsters, they are great. They all have freaky designs but still, look reminiscent of the animals that they mutated from. The movie only has a few monster moments that appear but it works. Every moment where a monster appears is intense and suspenseful. There is also a great world-building and rules set in the movie that I particularly enjoyed. Not all monsters are the same as each monster have different ways to be dealt with and some monsters who are not as aggressive which was interesting.
If I had to give a flaw to the movie then it has to be the predictability and the cliches in the movie. The story isn’t anything amazing and you can probably guess all the twist in this movie since it uses so many cliches that you would expect. Right from the first 10 minutes of the movie you can probably guess one of the twists near the end since it feels that incredibly cliche. The third act of this movie is not as good as the first two acts which were focused on the loneliness and struggle of our main character. The last act feels like a completely different movie with its over the top nature that is mostly dumb action rather than intense or suspenseful like the previous action set pieces.
Overall, Love and Monster don’t do much new but that’s okay. In the end, the movie knows what it wants to be which is the growth of Joel on his journey with some monsters and it does that good. The movie has a lot of heart and sincerity that isn’t in a lot of movies nowadays. The movie is carried by a great performance from Dylan O'Brien and I hope to see more of him in the future. I had a surprisingly good time with this movie and I believe you will as well.
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