Monsters of California (2023) Review
Monsters of California (2023) Review
Get ready for a brand-new Sci-Fi adventure drama, where spectres and unexplained creatures lurk in the ether and are only visible to those in the know. Meet the MONSTERS OF CALIFORNIA – a film directed and co-written by Blink–182’s Tom DeLonge – alongside Ian Miller. The film gets its UK debut this July thanks to Plaion Pictures. Inspired by some his favourite sci-fi movies including E.T. and THE GOONIES and his fascination of UFOs, DeLonge’s coming-of-age sci-fi feature is guaranteed to take us on a wild ride.
Among the blue skies and sunny vistas of Southern California lives teenager Dallas Edwards (Jack Samson) and his wayward friends Riley (Jared Scott) and Toe (Jack Lancaster), who are on a quest for the meaning behind a series of mysterious, paranormal events. It’s years on from his dad’s disappearance and, although his family are still grieving, they’re starting to move on with their lives… but Dallas believes there’s much more to what happened than meets the eye.
Spending his time in haunted houses, paranormal hunting and getting stoned with his best friends, he’s convinced that other life forms live among us, but when they uncover government secrets that his fighter pilot father left behind, they set off on a mission to find out the truth.
With the military – led his Uncle Myers (Casper Van Dien) – on their case and the help of his dad’s old colleague Dr. Walker (Richard Kind), the friends embark on a wild and dangerous adventure that takes them to the heart of UFOs and other unexplained phenomena. Can they uncover the truth about his father and unravel the hidden, extraordinary secrets held deep within secret Governments organisations, or will they pay the ultimate price?
Director Tom DeLonge makes a grand job of capturing the visual aesthetic of the Eighties movies he seeks to emulate with MONSTERS OF CALIFORNIA, and the film’s constant and often relentless score does the same. Where DeLonge’s movie differs to the likes of THE GOONIES and E.T. is that the core group of youngsters are harder to warm to and there’s an agenda here within the story’s framework that is hammered home with a lack of subtlety that ends up becoming wearing.
In researching MONSTERS OF CALIFORNIA, I learned that Tom DeLonge, aside from his being a member of rock band Blink-182, is a known UFO conspiracy theorist. Lead character Dallas (Jack Samson) is therefore a personification of DeLonge’s thoughts and feelings upon the subject. Unfortunately, Dallas is not an easy person to like, he’s bull-headed, argumentative, shouts a lot and feels that he knows better than everyone else about anything and everything. THE X FILES’ Mulder also believed in grey men and government/army cover-ups, like Dallas, but was easier to like and warm to.
The film’s humour misses the mark, and the runtime could have been much shorter – editing out the family fallouts would have worked a treat – but the film remains watchable all the same. It’s by no means a must-see but then it’s also not as awful as some online reviews would have you believe either.
