The Munsters

The Munsters (2022) is a movie my wife and I watched on Netflix last night. The storyline follows a legacy Transylvanian family that's daughter is up for marriage but is struggling to find a worthwhile suitor. However, a recently created monster, named Hermann Munster, is making the local news and rise in the underground rock arena and appears bound to be a star. When he meets the daughter looking for a husband it may be the spark to stardom for both of them.

This movie is directed by Rob Zombie (House of 1,000 Corpses) and stars Sheri Moon Zombie (The Lords of Salem), Jeff Daniel Phillips (Westworld), Richard Brake (Barbarian), Jorge Garcia (Cooties) and Daniel Roebuck (The Fugitive).

The look and feel of this movie had so much potential. The makeup, lighting, sets, attire, props and cinematography is magnificent. This is a fun movie to watch...if you shut the volume off. The writing is absolutely horrendous. The storyline, jokes, one liners and all of the humor was a huge miss. I did enjoy the transition and depiction of America and the ending setup for a television series/sequel spinoff. But getting through this movie was brutal.

Overall, this had everything it needed for success but solid writing. I would score this a 4/10 and try seeing it once.

Well, that sucks. No, not the movie. I just wish it had.

I love 10/10 star movies as equally as I do 1/10 ones. For every The Silence of the Lambs there's The Room. The Birds to Birdemic. Since I had very little interest in this - so much so, I did NOT at all know this movie even being made until the trailer dropped in July, I watched the enormously hated trailer. My eyes even got big because I wanted to see the disaster unfold in front of me.

So, I guess you could say I was disappointed with how not bad it was. Great? NO. Good? Eh. Depends. How bad of a fan are you of the classic 1960s sitcom? On a scale of 1-10, are you a 100? You might be the target audience!

This is the prequel tale of Herman Munster's creation and meeting his soul mate, Lily with her grandfather in tow. Through some sitcomish hijinks, the Munsters are bankrupt and need to, well, just tell jokes and accident their way through to the end credits segment.

Right. Well, I didn't hate it. Sure, some scenes and a ton of jokes didn't work, but this was written, shot and acted like it was just an overlong episode from 1964. This, sadly was not modernized whatsoever. I would've loved if it took the route of The Brady Bunch from the 90s or even The Addams Family, same decade. So, you'll have to accept this humor and style is solely from the mid-60s.

Once that was established early on, I accepted it and admittedly, I chuckled throughout and even busted out laughing a couple of times. The first and one I remember the most was Herman's intro and the piano. Totally caught me off guard.

What's really missing is the children. But this sounds like it was Rob's advertisement for a sequel which would produce the children. Though, it still worked as the introduction of the leads.

I did love how Rob owned the bright colors, Dutch angles and other sitcom tricks of the past decades. Plus, a ton of the background props and signs totally cracked me up.

This is only recommended for those DIE-HARD OG 60s Munsters fans or people who can accept this basically is that series in a nutshell and not freakout on how un-modern it is.

***

Final Thoughts: The show was a favorite of mine in syndication as a child in the 80s. Used to watch this back-to-back with The Addams Family and loved both equally. I truly admired even though these were both sitcoms about fish-outta-water macabre families, they were truly different in tone. So, I appreciated both for their own styles.

The writing is awful, overall, but the plot line wouldn't matter much if the "jokes" were even slightly amusing.

It almost seems like the main goal was to make sure that no one wants more of this garbage!

The costumes were great and the sets were pretty cool, but there wasn't much else positive about this movie.

I do want to mention that Shari Moon Zombie obviously put in some time and research watching Yvonne Decarlo as Lily. It was great to see the same mannerisms and expressions, but most of the performances fall flat. This stands out even more with the over the top nonsense that simply isn't funny at all.

So, just to start off, I am a Rob Zombie fan. I don't like all his films, but I respect when he swings for the fences and gets a win. Some hits and some misses.

I went into this wanting Rob Zombie to pull a rabbit out of his hat and blow everyone away.

Pros: the sets are really cool. Whoever designed them and anyone that worked on it should feel proud. They look awesome. I'm kinda jealous. If I ever made a movie, I'd love to use them. The lighting was cool too. I know the garish green and purple highlighting will bother some people, but I kinda dig that sort of stuff. And the acting actually wasn't bad either. Everyone was trying really hard with their respective performances and trying to be campy.

Cons: there is something really off about the movie I can't put my finger on. The editing feels "slow" or "delayed" maybe? I can't explain it but maybe some tightening up was in order. The music (or sound effects rather) are trying to imitate the old 60's show. And it doesn't work. They could've hired someone to compose a memorable score and it would've been a lot better. And finally... the film is boring. It feels like it's three hours long. It's really not funny. Rob should have hired another writer to polish things up. Play to your strengths.

There are things that could've been enhanced and the movie would work soooo much better. I'm afraid to say, I think this one's a miss.

When I first heard about this being made I was excited but worried at the same time. Since the original the straight to DVD/TV movies were just horrible. The only Munster related show that was any good was canceled and that was "Mockingbird Lane". When I read that Rob Zombie was making a movie about the Munsters I thought to myself, he was a big fan of the TV show he will probably do this justice.. Well.. Not quite what I expected.

When I first heard that his wife was going to be playing Lily, I didn't have high hopes for that character. I will have to say I think she did a great job. I have no complaints when it comes to the actors in this movie. But when it comes to the story it is just a mess. I don't think we needed a backstory to this movie. Everyone knows the story of Frankenstein. I think all it needed was a short 20-30 minute backstory and then jump right into them living at 1313 Mockingbird Ln. The story needed to be about them adapting to where they are now living. Instead we just got a small piece of that at the very end.. The set that they built for the movie (The Munster House) Looked amazing. It looked and felt very much like the old TV show. But the sad part is we got very little time spent there. It almost felt like it was a waste to build that house if you were only going to use it at the very end of the movie.

At the end of the day I really hope people and fans see the potential of this movie. I really believe it would make a good TV show with this cast rather than a stand alone movie.. but with someone else writing the scripts. I know Rob Zombie has been complaining that the budget was slim but after seeing this movie I don't think it was the budget that hurt the movie in the end. I believe the lack of storytelling and moving the story along is where the movie fell flat.

I'd give this a 5.7 out of 10.