Well this is just your standard post-apocalyptic arrested development coming-of-age horror journey, isn’t it? Except better. Not a whole lot of 2020 films left me wearing a giant smile at the end. This is one of them.
Who knows how old Joel (Dylan O’Brien) is? I suppose we can guess. He was in high school when the monsters attacked and took over man’s role as the planet’s apex predator … that was seven years ago. And seven years
later, Joel is still … Joel. Only underground, and humored. Not pampered. Humored. His colony is full of fighters, so Joel doesn’t need to fight; he makes the minestrone. Thanks to radioactive fallout following a meteor attack, many of the lesser denizens of Earth became engorged and aggressive. The Earth lost 95% of humans in a year; army weapons and the giant insects cancelled one another out. Now the remaining humans live underground, only daring peek at daylight out of sheer necessity.
It’s possible Joel hasn’t seen daylight in years. While not technically a coward, Joel “freezes up” when the monsters attack. He is darn useless in a fight and everyone in his colony knows it. Still, Joel longs. Inspired by the latest hookup among his people, he radios his high school girlfriend, 
Aimee (Jessica Henwick). She lives in a colony just 85 miles away, but it may as well be on another continent. No human survives above ground. And yet … that is exactly what Joel is going to attempt.
I can’t remember the last time I actually felt scared for a movie character. Keep in mind, I view dozens of horror films every year. But this ain’t Maze Runner: Joel doesn’t have any fighting skills; he doesn’t know the way, and he doesn’t even know what he’s up against. He’s also decidedly likable, and we applaud his foolish and short-sighted effort to get the girl the apocalypse tore from him … even though it’s foolish and short-sighted. Joel’s first encounter with a monster, however, a slow-moving, swimming-pool sized frogbeast stresses exactly how in-over-his-head Joel 
is. The beast is enormous but moves like a combination washer/dryer … and yet still is likely to have a hungry man dinner until a dog shows up.
Do you like movies where characters grow? Love and Monsters is a classic journey, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It is pure suicide for Joel to brave the trek alone and yet it is clear by the end of the film that he needed to do it. There is much more to life than being an amiable minestrone chef – even in monster world.
Love and Monsters is a fun watch and a surprisingly deep film. It morphs from the kind of film where every new human asks Joel if he were booted out of his colony “for stealing food” because nobody could imagine this milquetoast braving death to the kind of film in which no one would ever ask that again. In a year which few films left me satisfied at all, this one -for all the horror- left happy memories.
A funky future can make any human blue
Yes, I suppose there’s a reckless species or two
Ignore your myopia
Visit this dystopia
After all, who doesn’t have fun at the zoo?
Rated PG-13, 109 Minutes
Director: Michael Matthews
Writer: Brian Duffield, Matthew Robinson
Genre: Well, it’s not love
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Wandering souls
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Hybrid monsters
