Critic Reviews

An amazing achievement for a 'first-time' filmmaker, which measures up to the finest indies for performance and character-work, and the biggest blockbusters for jaw-dropping effects. And it has the year's best sex scene, too.

The film is a startlingly original and haunting take on our ageless fear of otherness.

Monsters holds our attention ever more deeply as we realize it's not a casual exploitation picture.

With Monsters, Edwards transcends the special-effects auteur label, creating a memorable sci-fi story in which the hero and heroine are true equals in the adventure. How's that for an alien concept?

Monsters is really a road-movie romance that tracks the burgeoning relationship between two strangers as they travel through the "infected" zone.

Monsters is enormously satisfying in the way it combines suspense, romance and sci-fi. It heralds a bright new talent in Edwards. If he can do all this for no money, imagine what he can do with a real budget.

However you slice it, Monsters is a dynamite little film, loaded with atmosphere, intelligence, beauty and courage.

Monsters works not because of its representation of alien creatures or its somewhat derivative back story but because of the atypical manner in which it approaches the character-based narrative.

Edwards is a wizard with his laptop's effects program. The squiddy things he conjures up look like the real deal - thoroughly creepy and a gazillion feet tall. Too bad his screenwriting software didn't have an equivalently impressive plot-twisting algorithm to get him to the final fade.

Monsters is a sharp little low-fi monster movie operating from a tantalizing premise.