I recently got to watch a free screener of Love and Monsters, by Paramount Pictures, in exchange for a review. I’m glad it turned out to be a pretty good movie or I wouldn’t have made it past the first ten minutes. Paramount failed to mention I’d have to watch the whole movie with a big CANDY KEANE watermark splashed across the very front center of the movie, the ENTIRE time. Talk about distracting! But the movie was good enough for me to overlook that one (giant) annoying thing.

Love and Monsters

Love and Monsters, starring Dylan O’Brien from Maze Runner, takes place seven years after the “monsterpocalypse” where the chemical fallout from a giant asteroid has mutated all cold-blooded animals on earth into giant monsters. These monsters have overrun the surface and forced most people to live in underground colonies.

This is where Love and Monsters differs from most apocalyptic movies and shows- no zombies! Just giant man-eating mutated monster frogs, snails and crabs.

Joel Dawson (Dylan O’Brien) is safely tucked away in one of these colonies, but as he watches other survivors pair up and fall in love, he starts pining for his highschool sweetheart Aimee (Jessica Henwick) that just happens to be in another colony 80 miles away. After a brief conversation on the two-way radio, Joel decides to brave the surface and attempt to reach Aimee.

As Joel makes his way along the surface he meets some interesting characters, learns to battle monsters and even adopts a dog. I won’t say if he makes it to Aimee or what happens past that because I don’t want to give away any spoilers.

So is Love and Monsters worth a watch?

Yes! I wasn’t sure about it at first, but that’s probably because it took a while before I could stop staring at my own name in the middle of the screen. Once Joel starts his surface journey and the first big monster shows up, I was able to overlook that and actually get into the story.

Throughout the movie I was reminded of several other shows- Daybreak on Netflix, The Walking Dead and also Zombieland…but again, Love and Monsters differs from these because there are no zombies. I actually thought they did a good job on the monsters. They looked good- not overtly sci-fi channel CGI style, and a touch more realistic. It was a nice break from the usual undead adversary.

The movie is rated PG-13, so it’s not for really little kids, but it’s not too gory or graphic either. It’s a good mix of humor and monster horror. And a little love of course.

Where to find it

Love and Monsters was released on Premium Video-On-Demand (PVOD) on October 16, 2020 and is now available on VOD platform, 4K, Blu-ray and DVD.