Monstrous (2020) Review

Monstrous (2020) Review

Sylvia (Anna Shields), a lonely 20-something, goes searching for answers after her friend mysteriously vanishes in Whitehall, NY, an Adirondack town known for its Bigfoot sightings. She sets off with a mysterious, charming young woman, Alex (Rachel Finninger), hell-bent on getting to Whitehall for different reasons. Sylvia soon learns that hiding in the woods is an evil more sinister than she could ever imagine.

When I sat down to review MONSTROUS I was under the impression that what was about to unfold onscreen before me would be yet another cheap and cheerful creature feature that I would duly forget about five minutes after watching. Refreshingly whilst director Bruce Wemple’s movie does indeed feature a creature – the ever-elusive legend that is Bigfoot – the direction that the story takes sees our beastie side-lined, top and tailing a tense thriller about missing girls where all is not as it first seems.

Written by one of Semple’s regular actors Anna Shields, who headlines here as Sylvia, MONSTROUS is effectively a two-hander as Sylvia and Alex spend time on the road together, getting to know each other with some unexpected developments along the way. Elsewhere there’s utterly endearing Jamie (Grant Schumacher), Sylvia’s friend, who humanises what could otherwise have been a stereotypical geek role. It’s more of a thriller than a monster flick and all the more welcome for it.

Anyone approaching MONSTROUS gagging for the usual ‘idiots-facing-off-against-a-monster-in-the-woods’ scenario is going to feel short-changed. Paradoxically they should feel short-changed by the sort of crap that they would have preferred this to have been – I know that I would have done. MONSTROUS is smart filmmaking for a different beast of genre fan, ones that veer towards the more cerebral than meaningless, forgettable basic thrills.

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