Monolith

Everything is armored and automatic, is that safe, or rather a recipe for disaster? Well, find out when a suspective wife takes a completely unnecessary trip through LA desert. Surprisingly it is not unwatchable, and does keep the suspense going throughout the movie, however a few things really keeps it in the lower bracket of entertainment:

First - child is crying all the time, alarms are beeping, woman is shouting, it is just pathetic and unpleasant in a way that it does not advance the movie anywhere.

Second - the main character, Sandra, has every negative trait in the book, she is jealous, irresponsible, clingy, weak (physically and mentally), bad decision maker etc etc. You just want to throw something at the screen due to her stupid actions. At least she is a cute singer...

Third - for the life of me I could not understand why she took her child with her and not left him with her mother-in-law, even if she did decide to drive to LA, what was she hoping to do there with the child?

I think overall rank is somewhere between 4 and a 5, I decided to be generous and give it a 5 due to being at least interesting for the most part. Watch if are planing to buy a Cybertruck :-) Exact score: 45 / 100.

The spine of the DVD says "Horror" on it. Totally inaccurate. Monolith is one part survival thriller (low on thrills), and one part science fiction.

Home-wrecking former pop sensation mom is worried her guy is cheating on her, so she drives his armored ultra-high tech SUV with toddler in tow to pay him a visit. She gets re-routed by her "smart" vehicle onto a shortcut... through the desert. She hits a deer (or at least something with antlers), gets out to check on it, and, well, her little boy, playing with her cell phone, puts the vehicle into lockdown mode, trapping him inside. That is some irresponsible s#!t.

I liked the idea of this car, and where car technology is taking us. For the bulk of this film, anyhow, it seems like a feasible place in the future to go. A vehicle that takes safety to the nth degree, and you can have a conversation with it! (complete with A. I. communication barriers).

Unfortunately, not much happens in this film. There is a character set up where you kind of grow to dislike bad mom, but at the same time feel a little bad for her. Then she gets locked out, and spends the rest of the movie making futile attempts to get back in. I actually thought the lead actress (Katrina Bowden) in this was good. She doesn't play it overly dramatic, and I think ultimately grew as a character to not take her son for granted. Then there's this total cop-out of a resolution, that I think is best left undiscussed. It does raise a number of unanswered questions.

I am a fan of movies with a very small cast, limited locations, isolation. It held my interest enough to give it 5 stars.

This car is so smart that that it has every safety feature possible, it can even differentiate between the adult and child passengers by their weight....and yet there's no feature that keeps you from locking your kid in the car?????? That part was just too unbelievable to overlook.

This chick is without question, one of the dumbest people in the world and has no business traveling unaccompanied with a small child. Because of course when I travel with my child through a blazing hot desert, I make sure he's in a furry bear suit. It had a lot of promise but ultimately you can't get through so many "I can't believe she's that dumb" moments.

For a certain situation to happen, a lot of things have to go sideways. And you have to understand that it doesn't have to be logical, it just has to bring us where we end up. So the main character going there, is terrible, but to some extend acceptable. What is unacceptable though, is her behavior with a kid in the car.

Which is one of the points leading to a certain situation. But really there is no love lost for someone like that. It's tough to root for someone or feel for someone like that. Then again it's all about the kid isn't it? Yes and you could also argue, it's just a movie. And that's where it loses me or my interest. So the tension is almost completely gone, maybe if you accept certain things, you'll be on the edge of your seat. But I do doubt it very much

The movie is not even close as bad as the user reviews are making it out to be. Seriously. There are syfy channel productions with a higher rating. And this is way above them. Nice idea, super clean cinematography (even though I normally don't like it like this) and the actress is also "ok". Sure there are cringe moments. But for a sci-fi TV movie that was all pretty much as passionate as it gets.