Psychological horror film Monstrous is deadly...dull

It seems vastly unfair to impute the onscreen creative failings of a movie to something as arguably innocuous as its credits, and perhaps in most cases that’s true. But in the instance of Monstrous, which tallies 41 (yes, 41!) executive producers (not counting four producers and seven other co-producers), the shoe seems to fit.

This inert psychological horror film is so extraordinarily dull and pointless on a purely narrative level that it feels like the product of endless financial horse-trading, tax shelter investment, and a thousand other compromises and accommodations. It’s easy to imagine Monstrous beginning its life, perhaps in the minds of screenwriter Carol Chrest or even director Chris Sivertson, as something exciting or unique. Unfortunately, it’s hard to imagine a more stillborn finished product, an exercise in tedium which checks the barest boxes of “completed movie” and possibly delivers unknown benefits for some of those executive producers, but otherwise offers nothing that might engage an audience.

Monstrous opens with Laura Butler (Christina Ricci) and her 7-year-old son Cody (Santino Barnard) packing up and moving to California. Ostensibly they’re fleeing Laura’s abusive husband, but there’s no great urgency or panic to their trip. The pair take up residence in a furnished rental home owned by the Langtrees (Don Baldaramos and Colleen Camp) in the middle of a vast rural expanse bordered by a pond.

Laura secures a generic office job with an equally generic boss, Mr. Alonzo (Lew Temple), and sets about trying to restore some sense of normalcy for Cody. Unfortunately, Cody is certain that a monster from the pond is visiting his room at their rented house. That monster, it turns out, is no figment of adolescent imagination—after a knotty, tendril-laden creature terrorizes him one night, Cody turns an emotional corner and starts adding it to family drawings, calling it/her the “pretty lady.” Laura seems a bit put off by this, but mostly is concerned with Cody just fitting in at school.

The key to engaging with almost any horror movie is understanding its vocabulary, as much as its story. Is it working in the shadows, or dabbling in the supernatural? Is it seeking primarily to viscerally jolt, or more to unnerve? Do we perhaps know the killer(s), or is the threat external and anonymous? Mash-ups, of course, blend modes of storytelling all the time, and aim to subvert expectation. That’s part of their fun.

Monstrous, though, simply does not seem to have a strongly developed, consistent idea of what it should be. For most of its run time it is chiefly invested, in bolded and underscored fashion, in airless evocation of the 1950s. This preoccupation extends all the way from Mars Feehery’s production design and Morgan Degroff’s costumes to a roster of radio music cues and its golly-gee dialogue (“I know that you and I are completely safe, like two bugs snug in a rug”), as if a period setting somehow magically elevates the story being told. All aspects of Chrest’s script exist to first service this function.

There are some hints, early on, of additional folds and layers, possible narrative twists in waiting. Laura has been taking medication, but might have stopped. She misnames a coworker in conversation with Cody. Then, late in the movie, she seems to have a drinking problem. But Monstrous has no structure or flow, and seems to exist only long enough to punch the clock and qualify for feature length.

Director Sivertson, whose credits include All Cheerleaders Die and the Lindsay Lohan thriller I Know Who Killed Me, has plenty of experience with the psychological and supernatural horror genres. Here, though, he wanly oversees a sort of ghost-ship production, one that lacks cohesive vision and the internal discipline of continuity. (There’s a scene where Laura emerges from an underwater nightmare sequence physically wet, but is then immediately dry in the next shot.) The movie’s special effects work is risible, though at least sparse. Editor Anjoum Agrama struggles with establishing any type of rhythm, and is apparently left to divine such basic concepts as atmosphere or tone on her own, resulting in scenes with a snooping neighbor coming off as alternately annoying and unaccountably menacing.

Ricci is a gifted actress, but she never locates a compelling through-line for her character here. She plays Laura as buttoned-up, neither harboring a great secret nor caught up in the undertow of something she doesn’t understand. The movie’s tagline (“The past can pull you under”), as well as a couple flashbacks to Laura in her adolescence, indicate a premise connected to trauma and grief, but Monstrous doesn’t unpack any of these issues in a way that is satisfying, or even substantive. Most damning, it doesn’t even seem to try. Bereft of scares, tension, unease, or any fleeting curiosity, the film offers nothing for a viewer to latch onto. But, hey, 41 people received an executive producer credit. Maybe there’s an actual story there.