Love and Monsters is a throwback to the family-friendly YA fares that were so frequent during the 80s and the 90s. A lovable (and self-deprecating) dork sets out in a dangerous world filled with large, deadly monsters to reunite with the love of his life. While the film wasn’t directly adapted from any source material, it takes plenty of cues from other pop culture staples such as Zombieland, Stand by Me and I am Legend.
24-year-old Joel (Dylan O’Brien) has been living in a post-apocalyptic world for the last seven years in an underground colony. Although the rest of the colony are badasses in their own rights, Joel is prone to freezing when in danger and the only thing he is good at is making minestrone soup and fixing radios. He manages to make contact with his old romantic interest, Aimee (Jessica Henwick) but once his connection gets interrupted, he gets worried about her safety and decides to journey to her colony, which is 80 miles away. That’s easier said than done, given that the surface is infested with huge cold-blooded monsters who won’t say no to an easy snack.
Despite Joel not even knowing which direction to head towards at first, he soon picks up important companions along the way. There is Boy, a trusty dog who won’t let go of a red dress, and later, there’s the duo of Clyde (Michael Rooker) and Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt) who teach Joel some important survival tricks. For a while, the tense nature of surviving in a monster-filled apocalypse subsides, but it picks right back up once Joel and Boy part their ways with the duo. Joel manages to make it to Aimee’s colony in one piece, but that doesn’t mean the danger is over by any means.
This is a PG, light-hearted adventure that feels fresh and endearing despite liberally borrowing from other works.
Dylan O’Brien settles in well as the lovable (and sometimes hard-headed) dork. Director Michael Matthews and writers Brian Duffield and Matthew Robinson don’t always manage to balance adorableness with tension and danger, but they manage to infuse a lot of heart into the narrative through Joel’s optimistic perspective. The visual design is noteworthy and done with great care, with little flourishes such as a giant spider’s web in an abandoned house and a bicycle lodged on a tree.
It’s remarkable that Love and Monsters leaves behind good vibes, despite there being almost nothing original in the story. There are small interesting tidbits, sure, such as all of the people in Joel’s colony being couples and all of the people in Aimee’s colony being old. However, the narrative is filled with convenient developments, and when something bad happens to Joel, like Boy leaving him after Joel gets angry at the dog for getting them into danger, you can almost telegraph the moment Boy returns to help him when Joel needs him the most. The ending sequence also feels a bit tacked on, and even the small twist feels like a play on the almost overused ‘humans are the real monsters’ trope we have seen so many times in stories like The Walking Dead.
Still, Love and Monsters doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s a shame we won’t get to watch it on the big screen, but hopefully, we will see more original features like it in theaters when normalcy returns to the world.