Michael Matthews’ Love and Monsters is a visual and auditory delight, mixing elements of the classic road trip with Ray Harryhausen-inspired monster horror.
Love and Monsters is yet another movie denied a cinema outing due to COVID, and more’s the pity, because it deserved a big-screen release rather than a decidedly quiet arrival on Netflix. Michael Matthews’ delightful post-apocalyptic adventure, starring Dylan O’Brien, is packed with B-movie charm while embracing a family-friendly, Spielberg-esque tone, making it a perfect monster-sized treat.
As an asteroid named Agatha 616 hurtled towards the Earth, scientists did exactly what we would expect them to do: they blew it up with multiple rockets. However, the chemical compounds in the missiles fell back to Earth, turning the animal kingdom on its head and enlarging every insect, bug, crustacean, and lizard to monster size. The result would place humans at the bottom of the food chain, as they became lunch for every creature that got a shoe in the face or was devoured on a dinner plate. As a result, 95% of the world’s population was wiped out, leaving small bands of survivors in secluded underground bunkers.
For our narrator and unlikely hero, Joel (O’Brien), the disaster came just as he had found love with Aimee (Jessica Henwick). In the seven years since his mum, dad, and friends were either squashed or eaten, Joel has dreamed of reuniting with Aimee from the underground bunker he calls home. The trouble is, Joel isn’t exactly a bug-killing hero, and Aimee is eighty-five miles away in a different colony on the coast. After a giant ant breaches his settlement, killing one of the survivors, Joel sets off on a quest to reunite with Aimee, meeting new friends along the way, including an intelligent dog named ‘Boy’.
But can Joel survive on the outside in a new world where he is just a tasty lunchtime snack? And is his quest based on an idea of love that no longer exists?
Michael Matthews’ movie is a visual and auditory delight, mixing elements of the classic road trip with Ray Harryhausen-inspired monster horror. The narrative conveys profound eco-messages, from our treatment of the natural world around us to our capacity to coexist harmoniously with the diverse array of creatures that inhabit it. While there is a predictability to our hero’s journey, Dylan O’Brien keeps things fast-paced, humorous, energetic, and thoroughly engaging throughout.
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