I'm not sure why, but I expected better

Look, contrary to what you may have been told, I'm no idiot. When I put in a movie like Monster, I typically know what I'm getting myself into. Bad acting, bad effects, nonsensical plot, etc. I know not to expect to be mentally fulfilled by movies like these.

Still, it's not many movies that can leave me with my jaw dropped in awe of just how bad it is.

Monster is the 'story' (I use the quotes because it's presented as Blair Witch style fact) of two girls who travel to Tokyo to make a documentary about global warming. During their interviews something happens. At first, everyone thinks it's an earthquake, but no, soon they discover that it's something more ALIVE. It turns out that it's some sort of giant tentacled beast. I say 'some sort' because you never get a clear shot of the creature, just some flailing arms.

In other words, we're supposed to believe that two documentarians would debate amongst themselves how big a story this is and then, every time the monster was nearby, they would only use the video to get shots of each other, not the titular monster. Fine. I'll but that, I guess.

Actually, that's not even that big of a problem to me. I'll be the first to admit that the imagination is scarier than anything that can be put onto a tv screen. No, my biggest complaint is with the editing. And, according to the credits, that means I'm choosing to blame David Michael Latt for this debacle. It's meant to be the 'raw footage' from the event, but it just feels...not raw but boring. If this had been a real event, there would have been much more interesting events on the tapes. For example, over the credits they play these little 'man on the street' type interviews. Where were these during the movie? They were by far more interesting than anything uttered by our main characters. Large gaps in the film, as shown by blank screens, just kept taking you out of the movie. And, I still want to know what kind of camera they had to shoot this thing because it had to have been the cheapest piece of junk they could find.

I can deal with a movie that's bad. I can deal with a movie that has no budget. I can deal with a movie that is a little light on story. I can't deal with a movie that's boring though. And Monster for all it's craptasticly cheesy promise was BORING. I'm not going to blame the duo of Sarah Lynch and Erin Sullivan, I think they did okay with what little they had to work with. Hell, considering the budget, even the effects were ok. No, like I said, this falls squarely on David Michael Latt and director Erik Estenberg. Tighten the editing up a bit, get rid of some of the 'failing camera' gimicks and Monster would make for an almost enjoyable bad movie.

Someday, I will have to give a movie a 1, but not today. Monster gets 3 video cameras that they could have looted while wondering around an abandoned Tokyo that would have been a vast improvement over the one they started with out of 10.