Lit­tle Monsters

“You’re being a child!”, remon­strates Sara (Nadia Townsend) with her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Dave (Alexan­der Eng­land), at the begin­ning of Lit­tle Mon­sters, writ­ten and direct­ed by Abe Forsythe. She is not wrong. The film’s open­ing mon­tage sees the cou­ple end­less­ly argu­ing in pub­lic places, and includes cut­aways to Dave inhal­ing a day­time bon­gload at home, mas­tur­bat­ing with his VR head­set on, or get­ting moved on by police while busk­ing with his elec­tric gui­tar. All this serves to show that, while Dave may be an adult, he is def­i­nite­ly arrest­ed in his development.

After he half-heart­ed­ly walks out on Sara and moves onto the sofa of his old­er sis­ter Tess (Kat Stew­art), he proves con­sid­er­ably less mature than his five-year-old nephew Felix (Diesel La Tor­ra­ca). Dave vol­un­teers to join Felix’s class excur­sion to Pleas­ant Val­ley Farm, less out of a good-heart­ed desire to help out than to get into the pants of Felix’s ever perky teacher Miss Audrey Car­o­line (Lupi­ta Nyong’o). When rav­en­ous zom­bies just hap­pen to break out of the ​‘US Army Test Facil­i­ty’ next door, Dave is sud­den­ly forced to grow up fast.

Much like how in Rober­to Benigni’s 1997 melo­dra­ma Life is Beau­ti­ful, the clown­ish char­ac­ter of Gui­do main­tained the pre­tence for his young son that their cap­tiv­i­ty in a Nazi Con­cen­tra­tion Camp was all just fun and games, the ded­i­cat­ed Miss Car­o­line must do some­thing sim­i­lar (if less root­ed in real­i­ty) here. She cov­ers up the apoc­a­lyp­tic dan­gers belea­guer­ing her young wards with a song on her ukulele, a good sto­ry or two and an irre­press­ibly pos­i­tive attitude.

This con­trasts, at least at ini­tial­ly, with Dave’s all-round irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty and unguard­ed con­duct around the chil­dren, while even he rep­re­sents a step up from the nar­cis­sis­tic self­ish­ness of inter­na­tion­al children’s enter­tain­er Ted­dy McGig­gle (Josh Gad), who would be as hap­py as the zom­bies to eat chil­dren if it served his interests.

Played with great charm by Nyong’o, Miss Car­o­line makes for a kick­ass hero­ine, and real­ly ought to be the film’s cen­tral pro­tag­o­nist. Sad­ly, this is all about Dave, with the oth­er char­ac­ters, not to men­tion the armies of walk­ing dead, feel­ing like mere foils to our main man’s arc from big kidult to car­er (and obvi­ous father material).

If Dave and Ted­dy behave, in their dif­fer­ent ways, like lit­tle chil­dren in adult bod­ies, Lit­tle Mon­sters comes with its own age-relat­ed con­flict of iden­ti­ty. For it is too ami­ably cutesy to hold much appeal for Seri­ous Hor­ror Fans™, and too aggres­sive­ly sweary and blue to be suit­able for the chil­dren who might oth­er­wise love it. Caught in between these two nor­mal­ly dis­tinct age groups, the film per­haps cap­tures and expos­es the juve­nil­i­ty that has always, if we are being hon­est with our­selves, been part and par­cel of horror.

“I don’t want to play this game any­more,” com­plains one of the kinder­garten kids near the film’s end. ​“It makes no sense and the zom­bies look fake.” She is not wrong – but being a genre view­er requires us to sus­pend such dis­be­lief and embrace the imag­i­na­tion and anx­i­ety of our inner child.