dir: Gareth Edwards
[img_assist|nid=1336|title=It's Grim South of the Border, Down Mexico Way|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=450|height=668]
Monsters. They’re everywhere. Not just under your bed, or bursting out of your closet when you’re not looking, or threatening you on public transport with their odours and with requests for money.
They’re also, apparently, in Mexico, trying to get across the border to the States in order to make some money and eat some quality junk food. These monsters are so terrible that a huge wall has to be built in order to keep them out, away from decent, law-abiding white people.
And then there’s this strange flick some guy made about some actual monsters, as in, giant alien octopi, that have infected Central America with their casual destruction and socialist economic programs.
Clearly, military strongman and certifiable egomaniac Hugo Chavez is the real target here. Whether he is or not, there’s monsters out there, and the going is getting tough.
This flick was apparently made for around $500,000, which isn’t a lot of money in the film world. In my world it’s what I would earn in ten years of wageslavery, so to me it STILL represents a fuckload of money; thank you Filmworld for skewing our perception of what a lot of money is or isn’t. I doubt it actually was that little, because every time these stories arise regarding flicks made on the smell of an oily rag, the press tends to leave out all the money spent on the flick in post-production, and on marketing and such. Whatever the reality, the fact is that this is a reasonably competent sci-fi/action flick in the vein of District 9 and Cloverfield, that nonetheless shares the same weaknesses but manages to overcome some of the common shortfalls of this new genre/production process.
Shooting entirely on that digital video that’s supposed to imply ‘you are there’, and really just implies ‘you are cheap’, it also means the special effects can be much more cost effective. The main effects were apparently done by one person on their home computer, being the director Gareth Edwards. Again, these stories tend to mask the reality of the situation, but they do make for an entertaining narrative.
This flick, though, isn’t really about the effects, or even the aliens themselves, if aliens they are. Since there’s no budget, the film spends the vast majority of its time focussing on the relationship of the two main characters. One is a photojournalist called Kaulder (played by the unlikely-named Scoot McNairy), and the other is Sam (Whitney Able), who is the daughter of Kaulder’s ultimate boss at the paper he works for. In the film’s world, a probe crashed on Earth in Mexico, and a while later, these giant monstrous creatures started appearing. Sam was in Mexico, Kaulder is tasked with getting her home through the Infected Zone, and that’s the entirety of the premise.
In any other flick, be it action or sci fi or otherwise, there’s going to be an awkward and obligatory love story or love interest. Quite often, these days, the romantic aspect tends to be a guy proving himself to his ex-wife and kids in the face of catastrophic weather, the world ending, or ruthless aliens, so that the ‘bitch’ can realise she made the wrong choice by leaving the main character in the first place. All it took was the destruction of the planet for her to see the man’s true qualities.
This flick doesn’t work like that at all. It doesn’t even posit it as a will-they-or-won’t-they scenario, it just has it as two people who don’t know each other that well, trying to survive the potential onslaught of these monstrous creatures, whilst trying to jump the border back into the States.
Yes, they’re Americans trying to sneak into America. Who isn’t going to get horny reading that premise?
The truth is, this isn’t an action flick in the sense that anyone, especially our protagonists, are fighting against the aliens. They’re just trying to get past them. And the people who are fighting them don’t seem to be doing that well. The aliens are monsters in the sense that they don’t seem to be part of some intelligent plan or species; they’re just doing what they’re doing, like crazy kids, raising hell.
So in truth it’s more of a road movie, with Kaulder and Sam getting to know each other on their travels. They’re not trying to save the world, they’re not trying to defeat our new alien overlords, they’re just trying to survive.
Finding that satisfying will depend on expectations, I think. People who go in to this flick expecting a kick-arse action extravaganza are going to be sorely disappointed. People who expect or demand more characterisation and believable characters and acting in their flicks might possibly think this is the greatest thing since bread was ever sliced.
I’m kind of in the middle myself. There are bits of Kaulder and Sam’s interactions that I found interesting or engaging. I also found it funny that one of the additional complications forcing our intrepid duo to hit the road and traverse a far more perilous path home results because Kaulder acts like a drunken idiot who, after Sam turns down his half-hearted come-ons, sleeps with some local girl who rips him off for all they’re worth, down to the passport and ticket that was meant to get Sam home safely.
Mexicans, eh? Always taking the jobs (like sleeping with Kaulder) that Americans won’t do anymore.
It’s impossible to have a flick like this with this kind of setting without seeing the clear parallels with the whole immigration issue, illegal and otherwise, that the States has been embroiled in since, oh, let’s say the Spanish – American War. The perilous journey that Kaulder and Sam undertake is no less harrowing than the one thousands of poor peasants undertake each day so that they can get poptarts, cable tv and iPhones on demand.
It’s not really a didactic exercise, not at all. The aliens do what they do, Sam and Kaulder scurry along, eventually both realising that the drama surrounding them is only the spice they need to realise they don’t want to go home anyway, so they can fall in love before the aliens’ tentacles get them.
It kind of works. I kind of liked it. I liked that Kaulder is something of a jerk, but not one lacking entirely in self-awareness. Sam’s sole quality seems to be that she looks a bit lost, and that the engagement ring on her finger seems way too heavy for her feeble arm to carry. I couldn’t get over the fact that the guy called Kaulder was called Scoot in reality. What kind of a name is that?
The bit that really resonated with me was a sequence where Sam essentially accuses the photojournalist of being opportunistic at best and a callous mercenary at worst. He outlines for her the curious market pressures that define the economics surrounding his job: a picture of a kid killed by the aliens means he gets paid $10,000 per shot, however the picture of a happy living kid surviving in the infected zone nets him nothing.
It reminded me of the notorious kerfuffle that arose regarding a photo taken by a chap called Kevin Carter; a photograph of a Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture. Carter came to epitomise for many people the predatory capacity in journalism, and it’s hard to not see the parallels here. Kaulder must make, for us, the transition between being seen to exploit the hardship around him, to doing his bit for these poor, monster-oppressed people.
Of course, he’s only doing it to get into Sam’s pants, but so are all the noble things men have done from the dawn of time onwards.
And, hey, it looks like it worked, since Scoot and Whitney, the two actors, are now married. If ever you needed proof that you only needed to pretend to do the right thing in order to trick ‘em into sleeping with you… well, there it is.
It’s a different take on a familiar genre, and one that I’m not sure audiences are going to embrace. People expecting War of the Worlds are going to tear their hair out in frustration. People expecting something deep and meaningful are similarly going to be pissed off.
But others who are just expecting an interesting flick might be rewarded. The best thing this flick achieves is that the camerawork doesn’t get frenetic or too frantic at all, the low-key electronica score is beautiful and effectively subtle, the two leads don’t look like the leads these kinds of flicks usually have, and the Mexican setting and storyline is an interesting twist on the genre and a vision of contemporary fears. Also, in keeping with the aforementioned flicks, it succeeds with a fairly downbeat ending, mirroring the premise that, whatever these monstrous creatures are, the Earth itself is changing to accommodate them, and this doesn’t look like a battle the humans are winning.
I also think it was a far more enjoyable flick than District 9, though it’s far less ambitious, but I can imagine a lot of people disagreeing with me. It just wasn’t as annoying. And what was odd about it ultimately, to me, proved to be something ever so slightly worthwhile.
7 sometimes you wonder who the REAL monsters are: Wait, oh yeah, it’s the giant squiddie things out of 10
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‘He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.’ – Friedrich "Cuddles" Nietzsche
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