Monsters Film Commentary

Despite the £500,000 budget spent on the production of the movie, Gareth Edwards and the crew of Monsters had managed to pull themselves together in a valiant effort to set themselves apart from all of the other movies that had come before it, attempting to be displayed at the silver screen in the US and UK yet not amounting to much more than a straight-to-DVD B-movie release.

The acclaim of the movie lies in the fact that Gareth had utilized all of the film's visual effects from home products and software programs using his own equipment which allows for a much better connection between the movie and us (the viewers) as it may not hold a candle to Avatar's special effects yet the true power of the movie comes from how we can feel that the small cast and crew of Monsters had worked hard to produce what can be described as a great sci-fi movie that doesn't disappoint; e.g. "His digitally created beasts, and the exotically wrecked landscape they inhabit, seem to have been created from a kind of social-realist grime. It's strictly 2D: Edwards is the anti-James-Cameron. The effects don't draw attention to themselves: tentacle-waving aliens are all part of the general, grubby absence of law and order," - the official Monsters review from The Guardian specifically highlights this.

This is true as it not only, received £4,188,738 in terms of box office but was also nominated for six British Independent Film Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor expressing that you do not need big-name Hollywood actors to craft a successful movie. Furthermore, the fact that they had just handpicked random 'actors' to appear in their movie also displays the realism of their acting as acting shouldn't be dissimilar from living a normal lifestyle as you still breath, live and speak like an ordinary character but the only differences are that you may portray a different character which you haven't portrayed before. Monsters was also nominated for the 2011 BAFTA's (Outstanding Debut by a British Director) but ultimately lost to Four Lions.

From the re-created signs to the water effects that were created using computer-generated imagery (once again, on a very low budget stretching how far production could go with the £500,000 used); Monsters is an achievement of excellence and will be praised by viewers more for the fact that this is Gareth Edward's first time film-making yet he proves to be a contender in comparison to big-name Hollywood directors such as Christopher Nolan who also tells stories using their CGI/film-making trickery (e.g. Inception).