shroyerw-1

Holy COW, I was freaking out just a little, because I knew what was coming up next. I mean literally, scene for scene, right on down to the lady sliding down the wall by the water cooler. I was beginning to think I was in some sort of time slip, or a "glitch", or something similar. I knew - absolutely KNEW - I had seen this before, but it had been in English, and the show's theme wasn't Greek gods.

Looked it up, found out it's a remake of "Dead Set", and yup - that's where I'd seen it before. I've only watched the pilot so far, but other reviewers aren't kidding when they say it's a scene-for-scene remake. The characters even LOOK like the originals to a degree.

Anyway, glad I'm not in a time loop. I'll give this a go even if every single episode is a scene-for-scene remake, just because it's been awhile and it was good enough the first time that I don't mind watching again. It'll help me practice my Spanish, too.

If you didn't see "Dead Set", and either speak Spanish or don't mind subtitles, I'd definitely recommend this. It's pretty good all the way through.

If, like me, you happened to watch "The Endless" first, and then discovered later on that it was a sequel to this movie, you might want to avoid it. It's a decent enough story in its own right, and the acting was great, but it's not really my kind of story. "The Endless" was, however. They're just two totally different moods, and don't even really seem to be in the same storyverse. I loved "The Endless", and wish I'd never seen this one, that's how different they are. This doesn't really fill in any meaningful amount of backstory for the bulk of characters you see in "TE", only the two in the house with the guy chained to a pipe. That was somewhat interesting, but not really worth it.

Give it about 10 minutes. The entire rest of the movie has about the same tone and pacing, so you should know by then if you're going to want to watch the whole thing. The movie gives very scant hints of the supernatural stuff going on, but not nearly to the same extent that "The Endless" did. Too many unanswered questions for my tastes, but as I said, I'm sure some folks will enjoy it.

The plot and the acting were both adequate, and even very good in places. It had intermittent "Us" vibes here and there which were creepy enough. But what really drags my rating for this down is the camerawork.

"There Are Monsters" is what I call "quasi-found footage" - some scenes are supposed to be seen as if through the lens of one of the characters' camera, and for some scenes, it's obvious that no characters are recording it. If it were intended to be a bunch of amateurs, or kids, or anyone else who didn't know what they were doing, the camerawork might be somewhat excusable. But even in the "found" footage, the characters operating the cameras were supposed to be professional cameramen.

My ass they were. The movie was so shaky and blurry in so many places, it really took away from the decent work of the actors. No professional cameraman would produce work like that, even on a job they weren't taking all that seriously. As if that weren't bad enough, they continued the horrible camerawork even in scenes that weren't intended to be "found footage". For instance, the main female protagonist entered a bathroom stall at one point. She was completely alone, no other characters were in the booth to film her. It was a steady picture at some points, but a jumbled, chaotic slurry of motion and digital myopia for the most part. There was no excuse for that.

The only other thing I didn't like about it was the jump scares, but they didn't have more than maybe 5 of those. I just hate jump scares in their entirety, so that might be more of a "me" thing.

Over all, if extremely shaky camerawork doesn't bother you, then I would definitely recommend this for you. Otherwise, I'd give it a pass.