‘Tis the season for horror movies, and we’re getting some really good ones. The latest to hit VOD and theaters is The Monster, the new effort from The Strangers director Bryan Bertino and starring Zoe Kazan. And if the trailer is anything to go by, The Monster is a must-see.
Zoe Kazan plays a divorced mother traveling with her daughter (Ella Ballantine) on a rainy night to visit the girl’s father. A sudden collision leaves them frightened but uninjured and with a dead vehicle. Searching for help to no avail, they soon discover that there’s something evil on those desolate country roads that doesn’t want them to leave.
Mmmm, that plot synopsis just seems so wonderfully simple and so full of possibility. I’m always a sucker for horror films with terrifying but straight-forward plots. Bertino is a deft hand at those too, turning vacation homes into a world of nightmares via the home invasion flick The Strangers, or finding something new to do with found footage in Mockingbird. A horror film about a mother and daughter stranded on the road has the chance to be so effective and scary without becoming over-complicated.
The trailer for The Monster certainly makes it seem like Bertino pulls it off, too. There’s a hint of the fable about this one – think those urban legends about accidentally killing “something” that comes back to haunt you – that automatically ramps up the tension. While there’s not much mother/daughter conflict on display, apparently the two are initially at odds, and so must come together to battle whatever this foreboding evil turns out to be. A storm, a creepy night, and some kind of monster in the dark woods around them, hunting them down? Yeah. I’m totally there.
The Monster does not come to theaters or VOD until November 11, 2016, but it’s already available on DirectTV.
