Monster

"Monster" is an okay movie, I guess. Wait, on second thought, it's not that great. It starts out as a rather unpleasant watch. Then after while, it gets repetitious. It never gets boring but it does get stuck in second gear. The first half of the movie is better than the second half. The no dialogue is fine for a while but then it ends up being a silly, rather ineffective gimmick. For a movie with a very friendly running time (86 minutes), "Monster" begins to feel like a long movie. 86 minutes long or not, it should have been about twenty minutes shorter. "Monster" is another straight-to-Netflix dud.

Monster (2023) is a remake of the 2020 movie "The Boy Behind The Door" and while that movie was nothing spectacular but pretty decent, this one is just an absolute mess. Two children are being abducted and wake up in a secluded cabin with their captor lingering around. After the little girl manages to free herself prepare to shake your head continually. The decisions made in this movie are absolutely terrible. While you could excuse the children for being young and not knowing better this does not apply to the villains. There are so many scenes where the Threat doesn't even feel real because of these decisions made. The movie also doesn't have dialogue which does not contribute in making this any better. The movie had some decently tense situations and there was a small potential hidden somewhere in this, however the overall execution is rather laughably. [4,5/10]

Okay, that is a tiny bit unfair, but given that most of their mainstream horror output is from legendary copy/paster Rocky Soraya, I feel like it's an appropriate joke. Monster is an Indonesian adaptation of The Boy Behind the Door, though with everything applied in a way that doesn't work quite as well when put together..... The visuals are the only good part, with some great shots and an overall suspense building aesthetic focusing on close and tight shots. There are even some well bits of swivel work that are done more than well enough, and the practicals have some satisfactory blood and violence to them. The killer doesn't really have any menace, but I feel like that's more in the overall acting and writing..... Speaking of which, the writing is one of the more lacking elements. While the lack of dialogue is a good choice, the story is very formulaic, with no actual surprises and no attempt at originality. There's very little to the characters too. No real substance to speak of..... The soundtrack feels out of tune. There's this odd western tune that always takes the viewer out of the scene, as well as some composed bits that are never timed right and never properly fit. While the sound effects work well enough, there isn't enough effort placed on them for sinister and/or unsettling effects..... The acting isn't great. The two kids, played by Anantya Kirana and Sultan Hamonangan do as good as they can, but their facial expressions are limited to either mild terror or high levels of fear, while the other two just go through their motions. The antagonists aren't exactly spooky or creepy, they're just annoying.

If you want to find out for yourself, Monster is on Netflix. If you want to save time and effort, just watch The Boy Behind the Door.

I enjoyed this movie for what it was it's kept me engaged and it was suspenseful. I don't think people can handle the lack of dialog but I thought the actor's performance was good I didn't have to have dialog to understand what was going on and enjoy the movie. The little girls is such a baddie! My only complaint was the music was a little misleading sometimes. Example sometime it sounded like someone was knocking on the door when they weren't, but over all it was a decent flick. If you like suspenseful movies I say give it a go, the jump scares were predictable if horror is you genre but overall fun watch.

The no dialogue thing is an interesting take that can work, but the show is the same thing over and over. The child is painted as both brave and smart yet also quite dumb, making quick moves at opportune times yet falling for silly things that would be way more intuitive in the first place. Maybe that was intentional? But it felt inconsistent and all the characters felt a bit basic and overly stereotypical.

But more importantly for almost the entire thing there is this terrible background feed of this sort of white noise highly degraded sound that comes in and out and it genuinely was terrible. Like gave me a headache and caused my to almost watch the film on mute terrible. I created this account literally to share that this sound ruined the movie. It goes on. The entire hour and a half. It's horrible.

I regret staying up late for this.

I regret staying up late for this.

I regret staying up late for this.

I hate that stupid sound.