Monsters

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Year:	2010
Country of origin:	UK
Director:	Gareth Edwards
Genre:	But where are the bloody monsters?
Starring:	Whitney Able, Scoot McNairy
Rating:	5/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470827/
Tagline:	After Six Years, They're No Longer Aliens. They're Residents.
Favourite line:	"All I want is to get back to America."

Quite, quite extraordinary.

The plot:
Paris, 2028. A shower of meteorites hits the city one night, striking the ground with unearthly force.
The meteors remain intact, though incredibly hot.
As the locals gather, a sound is heard: the scrape of metal against metal and, one by one, the meteors disintegrate, breaking apart from within. From the earthy confines, tentacles emerge, seeking out anyone within range and ensnaring them, pulling them towards the alien menace with savage ease. As the helpless humans near the meteorite wreckage are drawn forth, the wielders of the tentacles are made manifest, gargantuan, multi-eyed beasts with snapping mandibles and heaving flesh......
This could be the plot of Monsters, and it could be a lot of fun.
But it ain't.
Instead, what we have here is effectively a road movie, as two desperate sorts attempt to extricate themselves from Mexico, a country now divided in two - infected and none-infected - to head for America.
The Infected Zone, you see, is now home to extraterrestrial life, and few dare cross it but, through ill-fortune and desperate circumstance, our hapless heroes must make said crossing. A movie called Monsters which barely features any monsters should be a cause for disdain, but no, instead this is a cause for riotous praise.

The dynamics between the two leads fires the whole movie and, crucially, the sci-fi backdrop lends an air of apocalyptic dread.
Beautifully shot, magnificently realised on a relatively tiny budget, this is a celebration of all that is excellent about cinema.
Without dropping a single beat, this film should captivate and, simply put, the last ten minutes is so evocative, I felt pretty damn sure my heart would burst.
Magnificent.