MONSTROUS – Review (2020)

By Marc Butterfield

Sylvia, a lonely 20-something, goes searching for answers after her friend mysteriously vanishes in Whitehall, NY, an Adirondack town known for its Bigfoot sightings. She sets off with a mysterious, charming young woman, Alex, hellbent on getting to Whitehall for different reasons. Sylvia soon learns that hiding in the woods is an evil more sinister than she could ever imagine.

From director Bruce Wemple, MONSTROUS stars Anna Shields, Rachel Finninger, Grant Schumacher, Hannah McKechnie, Catharine Daddario, Dylan Grunn, Peter Stray, Rick Montgomery Jr., and Thomas Brazzle

The tagline line reads “Something is out there”… and its not what you think it is.

If you’re a bigfoot aficionado, let me tell you…this probably isn’t the movie for you. I was initially excited to learn about a new bigfoot movie, one that seemed to be, going it, a drama. Boy was I disappointed. The story itself struggles with the characters…as in they aren’t introduced in a coherent manner, and at times you find yourself trying to remember why Sylvia even cares or what her relationship to the missing girl even is. Oh…and there’s Bigfoot. Sort of. I mean, he’s in there, but I’m pretty sure his participation could have been removed completely and this would have been a forgettable crime drama, not just a forgettable Bigfoot movie.

There is predictable titillation, stupid pet tricks from the main characters, and at times I began to wonder if the characters were all supposed to be deaf, based on the things that they couldn’t seem to hear, which any normal person would have. Sylvia’s muted, brief reaction to having just seen Bigfoot in the yard reminds me more of Finding Dory than how a normal person would have reacted. I will say that Alex (Rachel Finniger) does a more than passable job in her role, again, if you can forget that Bigfoot is supposedly involved. But other than that, the story, the characters, and the locations just don’t make sense.

I will say that it has it’s moments, mostly humorous, sometimes intentionally, and while I’d give it one out of five stars, you can still find a way to enjoy it. I have a low quality threshold though, and MONSTROUS didn’t seem to reach even that.

1 out of 5 stars

MONSTROUS premieres On Demand and DVD August 11 from Uncork’d Entertainment.