Monster

Monster – Directed by Patty Jenkins

Review by LM Campbell

Serial killing and lesbianism has never been such an anodyne affair as in Monster. Two chicks in bed have never been so unappealing and murder has never seemed so tedious. Poor Aileen Wuornos had a shitty childhood suffused with forced penetration and physical abuse – or did she? From our introduction to her and onward she is an exaggerator and liar, manipulating the truth to suit her needs; she is a shell of a human who will do whatever is needed to get what she feels the world owes her.

Aileen is human garbage, fucking and sucking her way through life until she meets Wednesday from The Addams Family movie. They live together day by day until all of the money Wuornos ‘earned’ by killing a john runs out, forcing her back into an elliptical self-fulfilling prophesy of rough sex and handjobs. More murder ensues, some funny, others not. The film is bleak with gritty substance and harsh, unflattering lighting. The story is told surprisingly even and shies away from making her into a martyr for abused women. The narrative adds to the notion that this is not a piece of disposable entertainment, but a documentary chronicling what happens when a person finds the bottom of the downward spiral. From firsthand information I can attest that your first killing is nothing like your second, third or twentieth.

Monster is a character study of a person so distanced from acceptable society that her judgement becomes clouded. Her final killing was of a God-fearing Christian man who only wished to help; I know that many people fantasize about such actions, but if you asked the Aileen who dwelled in the first 10 minutes if she would kill such an individual I doubt she would say yes (mostly because your balls would be in her mouth, but also because it was not ‘in her’). The Aileen who started the movie elevated herself above the law by its climax; she ascended high from self-appointed vigilante to random harbinger of death. But Monster was soooooo dull. With all the dryness of a sun-bleached bone, Monster really needed a good blooper reel to accompany the credits (like at the end of all the Jackie Chan movies) or perhaps an improvised commentary by Dr Seuss:

You would not should not kill a man
Not in a car nor in a van
You would not should not shoot him dead
When all he really craved was head