Monsters

Does anybody now make a movie that isn't in two parts or primed for a sequel? It is very irritating for a movie-goer to be left in mid-air, feeling defrauded of the price of the second part's ticket. Especially, as with Monsters, when the first part has too clearly been spun out, a half-hour or more longer than its material justifies, in order to run a minimally acceptable hour and a half.

It's more than irritating when a way-above-average B feature is a one-man showpiece of excellence from its British writer, director, SFX director and cinematographer, Gareth Edwards. It may be only half a calling card, but his debut movie was his open sesame to Hollywood fortune and has already gained him the director's chair for the Godzilla remake.

A previous award co-winner and nominee for TV programmes' SFX (Hiroshima, Perfect Disaster), Edwards attracted a budget of less than of half a million dollars for his concept of extra-terrestrial octopoid monsters confined to an infected zone in northern Mexico, with a new great wall guarding the USA. Although Peter Jackson-backed District 9 had triumphed at the box-office despite placing its caged ETs in South Africa, Edwards wisely set his scifi thriller in the American hemisphere.

After a battle between US aircraft and the creatures on the southern border of the zone, a photojournalist is ordered to bring his boss's affianced daughter back home. They encounter all the usual transportation problems, corruption and jungle settings, and Edwards' producers knew the pair of lead actors, on-screen throughout the movie, would make or break its credibility. Experienced TV actor Scoot McNairy was a shrewd casting choice: he'd recently (2007) won an Indie acting award for the baby-budget (US$15,000) In Search of a Midnight Kiss.

He is a credibly egocentric photojournalist, although his relaxed facial image projects gormlessness rather than sensitivity. Almost too good to be true is the production note claiming that his then girlfriend, current wife, was offered the co-lead to better ensure an on-screen rapport: TV actress and movie bit-parter Whitney Able. A gamin lookalike for Cameron Diaz, she is both charismatic and very credible as a young woman finding her own life.

Edwards' location cinematography is excellent too, and his SFX of rampaging gleaming octopi, forest trees' trunks of their translucent eggs, and bomb-scarred Central American settlements are top-quality. His piece de resistance is the coupling of a pair of multi-limbed octopi over an abandoned gas station, where the two humans watch them, transfixed a la Strange Encounters, prompted uncontrollably to have their first passionate kiss - just before the screen fades to black and this audience's irritation point. The irritation is knowing that one wants to know what happens to the sensuous octopi. Which reminds me: there must be a second part for District 9. Please.