This is one of those predator-becomes-the-prey horror movies, which now seem to be popping up as frequently as the omg-someone's-living-in-my-walls horror movies. I really liked this premise when I first saw it fully addressed in The Collector (2009), which for better or worse explored it super seriously. Monster Party develops this premise super flippantly- so much so that pretty much everyone in the movie is a psychopathic murderer.
You may now be thinking that Monster Party is perhaps a clever dark comedy. No, that would be the similarly titled Murder Party (2007), which smartly explores the dark comic potential of the predator-becomes-the-prey premise by having its predators ineptly destroy themselves and each other. All while simultaneously lampooning the desperate confluence of art and hipsterism. Meanwhile, Monster Party is not funny and not serious. A generous appraisal would call it absurdist. I'd call it eventful, but vacant.
In terms of production values, the movie is visually impressive. It looks crisp and garish, an aesthetic that the character of the mother indirectly references when she describes the intense lucidity she feels when she murders. The actress who plays this role (Robin Tunney) is compelling! She stands out among the rest of the casts' competent, but ordinary performances (even Lance Reddick kinda phones it in).
The sound in this movie! The score is wildly overbearing. It prominently features lots of clamorous noise and booming bass, I guess partly cuz it's a supposed to be a party, but I think mostly to cover the lameness of the kills. Every time the weapons come out, the noise and the score get way, way loud, as if to mask the fact that the film edits its kills into a million short, hard-to-see close-ups or, even worse, stages them just offscreen.
I did watch this movie to its end, so I suppose there's that. The last five minutes made me regret it. Maybe the screenwriter thought that the audience would not anticipate what happens. I did . . . at the outset . . . and the film mind-numbingly delivered.
