Octopuses covered in marmite. Yum.

I would like to talk about the movie Monsters, which I saw at the cinema last year and I hear is being released on DVD and blu-ray next week.

Where I live the posters seemed to give very little away towards the storyline with just the title, a bit of shrubbery and a warning sign. It gave me the impression it would be a similar to the movie Cloverfield, but at that point I didn't know what the film was about.


A journalist is demanded by his boss to escort his daughter out of Mexico. This might sound like a simple task, but just to mix stuff up a bit the part of Mexico they have to get through is actually now quarantined due to an infestation of aliens aka 'Monsters', the result of a NASA space probe mission gone wrong. The US and Mexican armies are fighting to contain the aliens within the 'Infected zone'.

I don't like the title of this movie, it bugs me. How many other titles out there do you know that plopped an 's' onto the end of an already well-known, well-made, phenomenally acted movie? Yes, it is simplistic and ambiguous...but they aren't JUST monsters. They are Freaky Giant Octopuses!...Let's call it that instead of Monsters.

In Freaky Giant Octopuses we only really get to know the two main characters throughout the whole journey. Andrew, the male journalist, seems very shallow initially and like many struggling protagonists he is given his own personal redemption along the way.

Then we have the lady character, Samantha, who seems to instantly fall for Andrew even though she is getting married to her fiancée some time in the near future. Oh Samantha, are you really that fickle or are you supposed to be complex in some way?

Samantha is the catalyst for the narrative and yet she constantly demonstrates she has the least control of it by having the inability to take lead or even think for herself. Why is she even there?! She's left her fiancée at home to go on vacation to a country that's partially invaded by aliens, yet it's never explained for what reason and why it's necessary for her to get home at the most inconvenient of times. The only reason they go through the infected zone is because they miss the DAILY ferry which takes a safe route back to the US. I'm guessing they have to get back for the wedding or something...haha!

For a low budget movie I have to mention that the cinematography was actually immense. It created a beautiful atmosphere that needed to be appreciated in order for the movie not to feel like it was some shallow sci-fi docu-horror.

Let's just say that Freaky Giant Octopuses is very much a marmite movie - you either love it or you hate it. And unfortunately for me, this movie didn't satisfy my taste buds. It's not a movie I think I'd like to lick again.