Love and Monsters: Best Apocalypse Movie?

                                                                       – Warning! There will be spoilers!-

     2020 was a pretty bad year for most, but it had some cool movies. One of these movies is Love and Monsters. Starring Dylan O’Brien as Joel Dawson, the movie is about him trying to find his girlfriend, Aimee, despite Earth being infested with mutated creatures. Along the way he meets an old man and his granddaughter who teach him about surviving in the apocalypse, and eventually he makes it to his girlfriend’s colony.

     Joel starts out as an easily scared person who can’t really fight so he’s not much help to the people in his colony, but by the end of the journey he’s a great fighter and better than most in his colony. He comes across challenge after challenge the whole time he’s crossing the creature infested area between his colony and Aimee’s. He grows as a character when motivated by the one he loves. Another thing that makes this movie so good is the monsters themselves and how they look. It was even nominated for an Oscar for visual effects, although sadly it didn’t win. The monsters look terrifying and their sound design adds to how intimidating they are, although I was kind of disappointed by the final creature. It was a giant crab, and because of that it was hard to take it seriously. Every other monster was great though. 

     All of the actors and actresses did a great job too. Specifically Dylan O’Brien. He does a great job portraying the character. The gradual change from a scared kid to an experienced fighter isn’t easy to act out, but he does it so well. Michael Rooker as the old guy, Clyde, is also really cool. He serves as a mentor to Joel. During the journey he and his young granddaughter Minnow teach him how to survive and thrive in the wilderness riddled with mutated animals. 

     Seeing as this movie under-performed in the box office making less than 1 million dollars as opposed to its 30 million dollar plus budget, a sequel isn’t that likely. It was however the most rented movie on several streaming services when it came out and was critically well received, getting 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and 7/10 on IMDb so there’s definitely a possibility that a sequel will be produced. I would love to see a sequel to this movie at some point.

This is one of my favorite movies and I personally give it 96/100 raisins on the Raisin Meter.