Director Michael Matthews
Starring Dylan O’Brien, Jessica Henwick, Michael Rooker
Rated PG
Score 3/6

Seven years after he survived the monster apocalypse, lovably hapless Joel leaves his cozy underground bunker behind on a quest to reunite with his ex.

For those of you wondering the decision to watch Love and Monsters can be boiled down to one of those spur of the moment because it appeared-on-my-Netflix-recommendations decision, Love and Monsters has a Young Adult fiction vibe to it as I was kind of reminded of the 2019 TV Series Daybreak created by Brad Peyton and Aron Eli Coleite, based on the comic series by Brian Ralph.
A small part of me would have loved to see this on a large cinema screen because there was some stunning scenery and my television screen really didn’t seem to do some of the larger monsters justice.
It was great to see that there was no laziness on the part of the filmmakers and that Joel Dawson (portrayed by Dylan O’Brien) had a noticeable arc and that the character was likeable even if his motivations could have been lifted directly from the book of Ted Mosby. I know noting that the character is actually likeable is an odd thing to say one of my pet peeves with these types of movies is when you get to the climax and find yourself cheering for the bad guy hoping that they will hurry up and kill the hero so the movie can finally end. I really enjoyed Michael Rooker’s and Ariana Greenblatt’s performances as Clyde Dutton and Minnow, and if there is a sequel to Love and Monsters there clearly more of their story that needs to be told.