Monolith 2024 Review- Unnerving Existential Horror Uses Guilt And Claustrophobia To Pin You In

Guilt, privilege, and casual cruelty make for good horror. Any one of the three has been mined for countless genre films. Everything from Parasite to Babadook and classics like Carrie use these emotions to make the fear more relatable. Monolith by first-time filmmaker Matt Vesely, from a script by Lucy Campbell, harnesses those existential scares and manages to create something unexpected. Eerie and unsettling, Monolith is an amalgamation of contagion films like Pontypool sprinkled with a dash of alien conspiracy and an inexplicable pinch of Barbarian. It is a perfect example of why low-budget films often produce the most creative stories.

After a career-killing mistake left her with few choices, a young journalist credited simply as The Interviewer hides out in her parent’s estate. She desperately tries to resurrect her reputation there through a cheesy conspiracy theory podcast. When a mysterious story lands in her email box, she begins an investigation that is more dangerous than she could ever imagine. The closer she gets to answers, the closer she comes to an uncomfortable truth. Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies, and we can’t ever outrun our past.

She is sent a story about a black brick. The innocuous artifact shouldn’t be scary. In fact, for the first third of the film, we feel just as she does. This is a strange, nothing of a story, but it is the best we have, and so we commit to it. Monolith feels a little like that in the first act, which makes what happens next all the more impactful. Monolith is the sort of movie that layers dread like a winter coat over sweaters. The more you put on, the more restricted you feel.

Lily Sullivan(Evil Dead Rise) is the single focus of Monolith, and everything rests on her slim shoulders. The single-location single-hander feels like a claustrophobic play where the literal walls are closing in around her. The only human contact she has is through telephone and digital correspondence. The isolation makes her vulnerable to the bizarre story. Sullivan does a remarkable job conveying a wide range of emotions. Beginning with disbelief and exasperation and later confusion and terror. The credibility, horror, and dread are all expressed through her harried sighs and worried glances. When the final shoe drops, you are left wondering what exactly you just watched and if you know what really happened.

The cinematography by Michael Tessari smartly utilizes the cold monied halls of our protagonist’s home. It is a large, well-kept house but unfeeling and sterile. The only humanity inside is a turtle whose refusal to eat is an ominous signpost for a looming threat. The film could easily be tedious as we watched The Interviewer edit podcasts and feed the turtle as she whined about having to retreat to this expensive mansion. Instead of being exhausted by her tiresome behavior, the tedium elevates the creepy nature of the wild stories she begins uncovering. Credit clever editing and pacing to keep things moving with very little action. It uses only subversive cosmic dread to hold our attention.

The closer The Interviewer gets to the truth, the more convinced she becomes that it is dangerous to her listeners. Yet she forges ahead because greed and power are baked into her. Despite worrying about what the bricks can do and what her responsibility is to protect everyone, she focuses on what the story can do for her. By the time she understands what is happening, it is too late. Two final act twists are satisfying and maddeningly ambiguous, making Monolith as thought-provoking as it is unnerving.

Monolith is about guilt, regardless of how much we try to deny it. We may be able to forget what we did, but for those who we wronged, there is no going back. Sometimes, mistakes can’t be fixed, and the broken people we leave in our wake can’t be forgotten because their lives were destroyed. Our past catches up to us and demands we accept responsibility and atone, whether in this life or the next. In Monolith, we spend a good deal of time questioning if what is happening is some world-threatening conspiracy or something altogether mundane. Like the real monoliths that popped up across the globe, the truth is both more and less weird than we expect. Monolith will be in theaters and on-demand everywhere on February 16th, 2024.