Mon­strous – first-look review

It’s your new home. Isn’t it won­der­ful? It’s like a dream.” So says Lau­ra But­ler (Christi­na Ric­ci) to her sev­en-year-old son Cody (San­ti­no Barnard) of the Cal­i­forn­ian lake­side house that they have just start­ed renting.

Indeed, while the title of Mon­strous cer­tain­ly sig­nals hor­ror to come, this prop­er­ty is bright and breezy, with pas­tel pink and yel­low inte­ri­ors – more ide­al home (like the ones pic­tured in the women’s mag­a­zines that Lau­ra reads) than house of the haunt­ed vari­ety that typ­i­fies the genre. Moth­er and son are in flight, though, hav­ing retreat­ed, in a pret­ty blue 1959 Cadil­lac, from Laura’s ex-hus­band Scott. But now their past fam­i­ly trau­ma is behind them, and their new life seems idyl­lic. Indeed, when Laura’s moth­er asks down the phone if she should come and stay for a while, Lau­ra will say, ​“I don’t need any help. Everything’s perfect.”

Yet for all Laura’s protes­ta­tions of con­tent­ment, cracks soon appear in the wall­pa­per of this oth­er­wise pic­ture-per­fect lifestyle, bring­ing to the veneer of whole­some Fifties Amer­i­cana an under­min­ing ele­ment of Lynchi­an night­mare. Lau­ra secret­ly necks minia­tures, and has been on med­ica­tion. Cody appears to be hav­ing trou­ble fit­ting in at his new school or mak­ing any friends. And even as Laura’s dreams are inter­pen­e­trat­ed by the B‑movie lagoon crea­ture that fea­tured, as she fell asleep, on the house’s tem­pera­men­tal old tele­vi­sion set, Cody claims that a watery mon­ster comes to his room every night from the lake.

Like any lov­ing moth­er, Lau­ra reas­sures her ter­ri­fied son that the mon­ster is not real. But the real alarm sets in when Cody stops fear­ing and starts embrac­ing this noc­tur­nal vis­i­tor, now regard­ing the ​‘pret­ty lady’ from the pond as his ​‘best friend’ who has come to take him ​‘home’.

Direct­ed by Chris Sivert­son, Mon­strous only reveals its title after we have seen lit­tle Cody hear­ing a female voice call­ing his name and hid­ing under his bed sheet from an approach­ing shad­ow that turns out to be his moth­er, wak­ing him for their long dri­ve to Cal­i­for­nia. In this way, chirpi­ly lov­ing Lau­ra is her­self cast from the start as a can­di­date for the promised mon­strous­ness, even as a threat to Cody. The rest of the film will show Laura’s smile grad­u­al­ly fray­ing and her appre­hen­sions set­ting in, as dark, drip­ping real­i­ty keeps intrud­ing upon the oth­er­wise immac­u­late home that she has made for her son. In a mas­ter­class of anx­i­ety, Ric­ci expert­ly allows every strain and ten­sion to reg­is­ter on her well-groomed face, wear­ing the film’s psy­chodra­ma as a cos­met­ic mask.

Draw­ing on films as var­ied as Gary Ross’ Pleas­antville, Mar­tin Scorsese’s Shut­ter Island and Jen­nifer Kent’s The Babadook, Car­ol Chrest’s screen­play takes a flu­id approach to genre in its domes­ti­ca­tion of grief and guilt. While many view­ers will be able to see where it is going from ear­ly on, there remains immense craft and ele­gant econ­o­my to the sto­ry­telling here, with expo­si­tion con­fined either to pure­ly visu­al c(l)ues, or to ambigu­ous snatch­es of dia­logue. So this oneir­ic odyssey remains uncan­ny pre­cise­ly by leav­ing the sub­tleties of its care­ful struc­ture and the bread­crumbs of its buried secrets to haunt our minds in its post-cred­its afterlife.

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