Colos­sal – first look review

In Colos­sal, an amphib­ian mon­ster emerges ful­ly formed in Seoul, South Korea, con­trolled by Glo­ria (Anne Hath­away) from a sand­box in Maid­en­head, New Jer­sey. Tack­ling the men­ace and mon­stros­i­ty of psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse, Nacho Vigalondo’s film offers up a dar­ing deter­min­ist argu­ment on glob­al­i­sa­tion, the­o­ris­ing the chaot­ic causal chain that might con­nect an Amer­i­can first-world-prob­lems dram­e­dy to a South Kore­an dis­as­ter movie.

The intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty gate­keep­ers of the Godzil­la fran­chise thank­ful­ly haven’t stopped the Span­ish direc­tor deliv­er­ing an orig­i­nal, bewil­der­ing and brazen rock ​’em sock ​’em com­e­dy — and an unex­pect­ed star vehi­cle for Hath­away, who also exec­u­tive pro­duces. Gloria’s strait-laced boyfriend Tim (Dan Stevens) is no longer charmed by her antics, and swift­ly kicks her out of his Man­hat­tan flat. Our ban­ished, unem­ployed anti-hero is left with lit­tle choice but to take a bleak com­muter bus from the big city back to sub­ur­ban New Jer­sey, return­ing to her parent’s emp­ty house to sleep on an air mat­tress. With Glo­ria obliv­i­ous – and busy drink­ing with old high-school acquain­tance Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) – seem­ing­ly every­one else in the West­ern world is glued to their screens, rapt by the fan­tas­tic, sus­pi­cious­ly-timed scenes in Seoul.

Both Glo­ria and our unnamed Godzil­la-esque crea­ture share the same tell­tale ner­vous man­ner­ism, and it’s not long until we all wise up to this pre­pos­ter­ous premise. With an extra­or­di­nary abil­i­ty that – humor­ous­ly – does not ben­e­fit her des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion in any real way, Glo­ria con­tends with the annoy­ance and bur­den of this incon­ve­nient avatar. Black­out drunk, one prat­fall wastes an entire Seoul city block. A con­se­quent line of dia­logue (“I have to kill myself, I have to kill myself,”) mut­tered in a pan­ic, sug­gests the high stakes of her absurd situation.

Colos­sal is not quite as tongue-in-cheek as some­thing like Melan­cho­lia, con­flat­ing a depressed or self-destruc­tive woman’s plight with some­thing larg­er than her­self – in this case a kitsch reimag­in­ing of kai­ju. Gloria’s Mon­ster may well be a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of some abstract inner demon or fatal flaw, or per­haps more metaphor than mag­i­cal real­ism, but the film does not cajole this hard-par­ty­ing, per­pet­u­al­ly-hun­gover woman into clean­ing up her act, or chang­ing her ways. That’s some­thing the pathet­ic men in Gloria’s life are per­fect­ly capa­ble of doing.

Oscar is revealed as a vin­dic­tive, self-right­eous cyn­ic, hold­ing the pet­ti­est of griev­ances against Glo­ria. In spite of his small-town men­tal­i­ty, he too can appear in Seoul, fit­ting­ly trans­fig­ured into the nat­ur­al neme­sis of this men­ac­ing crea­ture: a giant robot. With a bananas log­line that sounds like a ram­bling, run-on sen­tence, this incred­u­lous indie gem defies any easy clas­si­fi­ca­tion. Instead, the film teach­es us how to watch it.

A movie with many ideas, Colos­sal is self-aware of all of them, even its own cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion – in one scene we can clear­ly see a stick­er of ​‘The Great Wave off Kana­gawa’ on Gloria’s trusty Mac­book. With an auda­cious plot and the unde­ni­able appeal of a mad sci­en­tist splic­ing Rachel Get­ting Mar­ried and Pacif­ic Rim, Colossal’s goofy, nutri­tious pulp is a joy to behold.