I was so excited when I first heard about this project, as Michael Davis is a wonderful talent with a great ear for dialogue and a penchant for great storytelling. The end result unfortunately is probably his weakest film to date.
Starting out well, Monster Man never finds it’s feet and is unnecessarily crude and unfunny, which detracts from the well realised horror moments.
The film centres on Adam and Harley (an annoyingly gross Justin Urich) who are on a road trip to try and stop the girl they both love from marrying someone else. Along the way they meet sexy hitchhiker Sarah and talk filth before being terrorised by a hulking Monster Truck a la ‘Jeepers Creepers’.
The chase scenes and the moments of horror are well handled, as are a few of the comedic moments, but the film fails to find that horror/humour balance and ends up being a drag when the kids aren’t in danger.
The film looks great with creepy locations and really nice photography, and the make-up and gore effects are similarly impressive, but I’m afraid that it wasn’t enough to ensure that I had the fun time I had come to expect.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Michael Davis is known for creating sympathetic characters who are based in reality. The characters here however are more annoying than they are sympathetic, and everyone was dying to see the vulgar Harley squashed to a bloody pulp. If the tone of the movie had been established a little better from the outset this would have been a lot better.
