Love and Monsters

I remember exactly where I was when I first saw the trailer for Love and Monsters: sitting on my sofa in late 2020, wearing the same sweatpants I’d worn for three days straight, wondering if the outside world still existed. When Dylan O'Brien popped up on my screen as a guy who had been stuck in a literal hole for seven years, it didn't feel like science fiction; it felt like a documentary. My sourdough starter had just died a tragic, bubbly death on the counter—it looked less like a baking project and more like a prop from a David Cronenberg body-horror flick—and I desperately needed a win.

Released during that weird limbo where theaters were ghost towns and Paramount decided to pivot to a Premium VOD release, Love and Monsters could have easily been another "straight-to-digital" casualty. Instead, it’s become one of the most delightful cult sleepers of the decade. It’s a film that understands the apocalypse shouldn't just be gray filters and crying over canned beans; sometimes, it should be colorful, terrifying, and surprisingly sweet.

The Survival of the Sweetest

The setup is classic adventure territory: after a chemical mishap turns the world’s cold-blooded critters into Kaiju-sized nightmares, humanity has moved underground. Our hero, Joel Dawson (Dylan O'Brien), isn’t the guy you want in a fight. He’s the bunker’s resident "minestrone guy"—he cooks, he repairs radios, and he freezes in the face of danger. He’s basically me, but with better hair and a much more functional bunker.

Joel decides to trek 80 miles across a monster-infested surface to find his high school girlfriend, Aimee, played by Jessica Henwick (The Matrix Resurrections, Glass Onion). What follows is a picaresque journey that owes as much to The Odyssey as it does to Zombieland. O’Brien is the secret sauce here. He’s got that rare, 1980s-era Michael J. Fox energy—an expressive, frantic charm that makes you root for him even when he’s being spectacularly incompetent. He carries the first act almost entirely through monologues to a dead radio and some very expressive eyebrows.

Practical Magic and Kinetic Chaos

In an era where every Marvel movie ends with a muddy CGI slurry of indistinguishable shapes, Love and Monsters is a breath of fresh air. The monster designs are genuinely inspired. We get "Sand-Gobblers," giant centipedes, and a colossal, mutated crab that looks like it belongs on a heavy metal album cover. The film was actually nominated for an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, and you can see why. Director Michael Matthews balances digital wizardry with practical textures; you can almost smell the slime.

The action choreography is built around Joel’s vulnerability. He’s not John Wick. He’s a guy with a crossbow who is perpetually one second away from being a snack. There’s a sequence involving a giant snail that manages to be both tense and strangely moving, proving that you don't need a $200 million budget to create a memorable set piece. The film treats its action as a series of puzzles Joel has to solve, often with the help of a very good dog named Boy (played by two Australian Kelpies, Hero and Dodge, who deserve their own stars on the Walk of Fame).

Mentors and the Road Less Traveled

About a third of the way through, Joel runs into Clyde and Minnow, played by Michael Rooker (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Ariana Greenblatt (Barbie, Ahsoka). Rooker is basically playing a kinder, gentler version of his Walking Dead character, Yondu-ing his way through the apocalypse with a set of survival rules. It’s a classic "found family" trope, but it works because the chemistry is so effortless. Rooker’s gravelly wisdom provides the perfect foil to O'Brien's frantic energy.

Apparently, the production was quite the physical ordeal. Filmed in the wilds of Queensland, Australia, the cast had to contend with actual leeches and snakes that weren't CGI. Michael Rooker reportedly spent his downtime teaching Ariana Greenblatt how to handle real-world survival tools, which adds a layer of authenticity to their on-screen bond. It’s that kind of earnestness that elevates the film. It doesn't wink at the camera or try to be "post-modern" and cynical. It just wants to tell a story about a guy who finds his backbone in a world that’s lost its mind.

A Cult Classic for the Shut-In Generation

What’s fascinating about Love and Monsters in the rearview mirror is how it reflects our current cultural moment. It arrived when we were all feeling isolated, making Joel’s quest for connection feel remarkably poignant. It’s a "Legacy Sequel" in spirit to the Amblin movies of the 80s—think The Goonies or Tremors—but updated with a modern sensibility regarding subverting expectations. Without spoiling the ending, I’ll say that the film chooses emotional growth over the "save the princess" cliché, which makes it feel much more relevant to 2024 than your standard action fare.

The box office numbers were abysmal ($1.1 million against a $30 million budget), but that’s a "2020 statistic" that doesn't tell the whole story. In the streaming world, it became a massive hit on Netflix (internationally) and VOD platforms, proving that the old metric of theatrical success is increasingly useless for judging a film’s longevity. It’s a movie that people keep discovering, passing it along like a secret handshake. It’s fun, it’s fast, and it’s got a giant toad. What else do you really need?

If you missed this during the great bunker-dwell of 2020, do yourself a favor and catch up. It’s a rare piece of original sci-fi that prioritizes character over world-building and heart over hardware. It’s the kind of movie that makes you want to go outside, even if there’s a chance a giant worm might try to eat your car. Just make sure your sourdough is properly put away first.