Review of Love and Monsters

On the face of it, Love And Monsters is a tough sell. A movie about the end of the world dropping on Netflix during a global pandemic? Yikes. Luckily, its decision to not go down a gloom-and-doom route works in its favour, and its endless charm offsets any real-world anxieties. Its protagonist, Joel Dawson (Dylan O'Brien), is an apocalypse survivor who, by the standards of any mainstream Hollywood disaster movie, should not still be alive. Holed up in a bunker with a group of fiercely brave weapons-wielding survivalists, his most useful quality is his ability to make a tasty minestrone soup. Too skittish to fight and woefully inept when he does try, the lovelorn Joel spends his days composing letters to his long-distance girlfriend, Aimee (Jessica Henwick), and trying to get in touch with her over a makeshift radio.