|
Reviewed
by: Ryan Doom
Directed
by: Bryan Roberts, Nolan Ball
Starring:
Kachina Dechert
Beatrice Strobl and Bethany Taylor
|
|
|
| A trio of teens encounters a gas station owning couple who dig killing, making chocolates, and dumping corpses into a dumpster. |
 |
There’s nothing quite like starting a film with a teen giving birth to a baby in a dirty gas station bathroom. To make matters worse, the teen isn’t real pleased about the whole baby thing, so she kills and disposes of the body in a green trash dumpster behind the store. From there, she’s hitches a ride with a dirty redneck, gets strangled, and then gets sliced up via table saw. In teaching writing, I tell my students they need an effective hook to draw readers in. The Green Monster does that – for better or worse.
I suspect directors Bryan Roberts and Nolan Ball are fans of Rob Zombie. It’s probably a little unfair drawing comparisons to Zombie because it’s not like he invented his own horror genre or anything. In fact, he lifted various films from the 70s like so many directors have done. The comparison comes from the dialogue and Zombie’s love for trashy, fast-talking killer scumbags. He has that market cornered. In The Green Monster, its bad, bad clerks end up a little too fiendish and hip. I kept thinking either Captain Spalding or Otis. But maybe that was just me.
I’m not 100% sure where to place a flick like The Green Monster. It’s gory, entertaining, somewhat funny, and just wrong. However, it’s also dull and dimwitted and it struggles to find a proper tone. At times the horrific deeds of the convenience store killers are horrific in deed, but then there’s a mini-love story in a high school backdrop and some of the worst and dumbest looking cops ever put into a motion picture. In the end, nothing feels cohesive. Perhaps that’s due to the screener copy I viewed. I don’t know. I’m not sure if this is the final edit or not. If it is, I’d suggest that if there’s an appearance of police in a crime movie, their presence needs to be felt. They (or at least one of the cops) need to be taken seriously. Even if our villains are exaggerated, they need a straight man to play off of. One could argue that the three teen girls are that serious opposition, but hell, that makes no sense. What impact they do have is pretty minimal.
Regardless, watch a movie like The Green Monster for what it is. It’s goofy, stupid, gory, lame, yet somehow entertaining. The quality isn’t exactly top notch, but I’d have to imagine the budget is as thin as the character development. And that’s pretty thin.
|
 |
Video: Widescreen presentation.
Audio: Presented with the power of really good sound (wasn’t listed)
|
| Worth a watch for gore fans and people who really dig Rob Zombie movies. A graphic, blood-soaked adventure that’s wrong on so many levels. Of course, that’s a reason to give it a chance. |
All Rights Reserved JoBlo.com
|
Episode #34
