The Monster, the new film by Bryan Bertino (The Strangers, Mockingbird), follows a stranded mother and daughter who are stuck in a cat and mouse game with a menacing creature. Bertino’s film career has revolving entirely around horror, but the same can’t be said for the film’s star, Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks, Olive Kitteridge). Kazan tends to play roles in thoughtful indie films, so to see her in a monster movie is a surprise. The trailer has an eighties vibe—the care Kazan is driving is an eighties-model, American made clunker—and will remind Stranger Things fans of the opening scene of the series. The trailer doesn’t give us a good look at the monster, which isn’t surprising. From the glimpses we see, though, I sense something insect-like with a dash of Creature from the Black Lagoon. Like The Stranger, Bertino’s new movie looks like it borrows from psychological thrillers in the way the plot builds toward disorder. While Bertino’s last film Mockingbird didn’t fare well (it’s ranked as 4.1/10 on IMDB, which is low, even for IMDB), but The Monster looks promising, particularly for fans of monster movies and movies that enjoy a good “stranded in the woods” storyline.
