I love everything about the Bigfoot mythology, from apparent sightings, footprints, blurry pictures, right down to the obvious hoaxes. There has always been just enough of the ‘what if’ factor to keep me interested, so whenever there is a movie on the subject I am more than happy to give it a watch. Monstrous wasn’t what I expected, and that’s not always a bad thing, but this attempt was a bit messy and left me scratching my head in disbelief a few too many times.
Anna Shields, who is also the writer, stars as Sylvia, and she wants answers to the disappearance of her friend. After her best friend Jamie (Grant Schumacher) gets sick, she finds herself driving with total stranger Alex (Rachel Finninger) to Whitehall, NY, a town known for Bigfoot sightings. The car trip allows the two time to get to know each other and even though they begin to bond, once at Alex’s cabin in the middle of nowhere, Sylvia begins to have doubts about if Bigfoot is really the one responsible for the disappearance of her friend and many other women.
That, in essence, is the movie. Director Bruce Wemple tries his best to build a tense movie around this story by having Alex and Sylvia become attracted to one other, while at the same time, pushing the idea that Bigfoot is not really the monster of this story, and how humans are just as bad, if not worse. It’s an old story, told many times, but to be fair it’s a powerful one. Human beings are capable of some pretty atrocious things and far too often, we look elsewhere to lay the blame.
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There are a few problems with this execution, though. While I can see Alex and Sylvia being attracted to one another and bonding over a long car ride, and the actors do a fine job with it, it happens too fast and the writer and director ask too much of the audience in terms of this relationship. That is the other issue, which is a big one, in that there are too many moments where the audience is asked to suspend its disbelief and just go with it. Hey, it’s a Bigfoot movie, I can appreciate that, but there were far too many times where jumps in logic and strange storylines left me shaking my head. The story is ambitious but the execution was not there, which killed the tension of many scenes.
Speaking of Bigfoot, let’s talk about the supposed star of the film. I understand what the writer was doing here, what the story is truly about, but for the love of everything hairy, we needed to see more of this exquisite piece of mythology. I do like they showed the creature in the dark and in the shadows many times, which was the proper way to do it. A creature unseen is always more disturbing and creepy, especially in a dark and shadowy setting. However, when they brought Bigfoot out in the open, in daylight I might add, it killed any of the little bit of tension they had built up.
The Bigfoot/Sasquatch sub-genre of horror has long been a mixed bag, both in terms of story and proper representation of the big guy (or girl). Monstrous is another one of those movies, that trips over its ambitious story too many times, never quite melding the subplots together, leaving the audience wondering what could have been.
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Sorry man, you’re being generous. It was awful. Bigfoot wasn’t even necessary to the story, and practically wasn’t. The geography made no sense,the sex was gratuitous and forced, and the characters idiotic beyond belief. I **WANTED** to like this.