Love and Monsters (2020)

Love and Monsters (2020)

7/10

Starring

Dylan O'Brien

Michael Rooker

Ariana Greenblatt

Jessica Henwick

Directed by Michael Matthews

Set in a post-apocalyptic earth Love and Monsters is a movie that makes all the necessary stops thanks to some talented story and screenwriting. The director did a wonderful job of keeping the movie on track with some willful characterization which I have to commend Dylan O’Brien for his acting skills. O’Brien gave us a character which was focused, determined and silly enough to think love is all he needs to make an unbelievable journey.

The director held the movie together with some nice narration from O’Brien’s character Joel and the introduction of cool characters, which included a dog.

Imagine a future where there is a large meteor heading towards earth and we fired all the nuclear powered stuff we had at it. We finally get the meteor, but the whole nuclear thrown into the atmosphere messed up our entire planet. The radioactive waste from the weapons led to mutation of almost all the creatures on the planets and they came after us. These creatures killed over ninety-five percent of the world population (of humans) and the ones left hide in bunkers.

We meet Joel who lives in a bunker with a lot of people who have all coupled up, and the movie starts with that which can be very confusing. At first I felt with this introduction of sex in the very beginning this movie will be very sexually focused. It turns out that beginning was the only sexual tone there was, so do not get flustered by it.

In Joel’s bunker he is the cook because Joel has a thing that when he gets scared, he freezes. He also keeps a diary and writes letters to his former girlfriend from seven years ago before the world turned to what we see now. It so happens that she is in another bunker and he has been able to make contact with her, and kept in touch for like a year now.

He then decided out of the blue when their bunker was breached that he is going to go to meet her at her bunker. His colleagues were shocked that he wanted to make such a journey because it was obvious that Joel will not survive a day in the outside world and now he wants to make a seven day journey to go find his old lover.

The whole adventure led him to find a dog, who then went with him on his ridiculous adventure which almost got them killed and were saved by a man and a little girl. The duo were going towards a cold mountainous and Joel went along with them on their way, while learning how to survive. At this point the movie makes a nice dash in the third-act from a comedic thrilling adventure to an action adventure. It ended in a way that made room for future additions to the story.

I enjoyed seeing the movie and I think you will too.