Love and Monsters 4K 2020 Ultra HD 2160p

As soon as Joel (Dylan O'Brien) began his first love affair with a pretty girl, the world came to an end: the explosion of an approaching asteroid turned into mutations all over the planet. The animated pictures in the animated sideshow colorfully explain how the goldfish began to devour their owners, and the weapon for the war with the cockroach turned from a sneaker into a shotgun. Seven post-apocalyptic years have passed since the cataclysm that became the starting point of the new history: 95% of humanity died out, and the rest are grouped into communes and hiding in bunkers, basements and other shelters where it is more difficult for monsters to get to them.

Love and Monsters 4K Review
In cinema, Armageddon had a very different face and manner of survival: the last heroes in empty cities, romantic travels in search of a friend at the end of the world, or even the crazy psychosis of Hollywood actors. Balancing on the brink of genre extremes (in other words, just a little bit), director Michael Mathews strikes down the arrogance of epic pretentiousness and the element of exclusivity from his characters. "Love and Monsters" (before the machinations of marketers "Problems with the Monster") is a story of growing up in the scenery of a devastated world.

Against his will, Joel remained a teenager by the age of 24: when the best summer in life ended at one moment, instead of a college dormitory, he went to the iron walls of the colony's bunker, his parents were much less fortunate - their journey ended tragically before it began. Survival friends quickly crawled into pairs, Joel got pots and minestrone soup. While all the others go hunting in search of food and fight mutants, he milks a cow, draws and sighs mournfully over the radio - the same girl Amy (Jessica Henwick) survived, but is miles away. Joel's features are a hero of our time: timid, insecure, vulnerable, romantic and sometimes (as it seems to him at first) completely helpless - a summary portrait of the masculinity that today was diagnosed with a crisis. Despite the persuasions of neighbors and threats mixed with anxiety ("you won't even last a minute on the surface"), he decides to replace platonic relations and hide and seek from death with an adventure with an alluring happy ending in the finale and goes on foot to Amy's colony.

"Love and Monsters" simultaneously manages to be similar to all films of the genre at once and not get lost behind recognizable references: like Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) from "Welcome to Zombieland", Joel makes, if not a list of rules, then an illustrated encyclopedia of survival and a card index of monstrous creatures. On the way, he will meet his Talahassi, only from The Walking Dead (Michael Rooker), with a young partner with a pink crossbow (Ariana Greenblatt). Joel's main companion on the expedition to the coast will be a good Boy (this is a name, and therefore with a capital letter): a brave and independent dog, yearning for his mistress. Spoiler alert: no heartbreaking finals from I Am Legend are expected here. A ringing echo through the night full of flying jellyfish, the song Stand by me, which gave its name to the stainless classics of Rob Rainer, will sweep through the sky - like the King's boys, a whole swamp of leeches awaits Joel. The director himself says in an interview that he was inspired by the films he grew up on, like Back to the Future or the Indiana Jones adventure series. Indeed, all these refrains, allusions and footnotes resonate in the viewer with the same feelings as the protagonist: Joel, after a spectacular victory over the monster, compares himself to Tom Cruise from Mission: Impossible, as if removing the armor of a cinematic character - he is just like everyone else, I saw battles with death only in the movies.

At the same time, the film has its own sense of time and an open world, where life lurks behind every stone, electric poles are taken hostage by thickets, and toads are the size of bears - Australia was chosen as the landscape for filming, which, even without mutations, can frighten the inhabitants of other continents of its flora and fauna. The frantic pulsation of a bunch of uncontrollable energy ripples across the screen, the horizontal movement of the plot rushes forward and does not freeze for a second: comedy, touching and action scenes replace each other in a round dance. In some places, "Love and Monsters" the movie is overly sentimental, naive, cute, and in some places and shamelessly predictable: the savior, deus ex machina, will appear exactly when you most expect him, and the main monsters are, as always, people who are more terrible than most monsters.

In the finale, Joel will inevitably grow up in seven days on the outside, making up for seven years on the inside, embracing himself and conquering his fear. But surprisingly, all this recognition, both pop-cultural and at the level of the plot structure, does not spoil the film at all, but only adds lamp charm. Perhaps the main merit of "Love and Monsters" (which, most likely, aimed at teenagers) lurked in the moral, pronounced on the screen too timely, although the authors could hardly imagine the actual sound of the picture at the time of production. Even in the worst of times, you must try to live your best, and not just be afraid and hide. Without losing your mind and common sense, one day it is worth leaving your bunker to meet a new day: "Do not get hung up, it is not necessary, especially when the world is over."

Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265
Resolution: Upscaled 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1

Subtitles
English, English SDH, Spanish