5 Fun Monster Movies

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1. Digging up the Marrow (2014)



Digging up the Marrow is a mockumentary made by real life horror director Adam Green (director of Hatchet, Spiral and the TV show Holliston). Adam is approached by a man named William Dekker (Ray Wise), who believes that he has found the entrance to 'the Marrow', an underground place where real monsters live in secrecy. Adam and his cameraman follow Dekker to a cemetery where they attempt to film the creatures he describes with very mixed results.



This film stood out to me among other monster movies I've seen because it mixes found footage and interviews with horror fans about what interests them about the genre. In the opening segment shot at a horror convention, we see Alex Pardee, the artist who designed the creatures we will see later in the film, as himself, talking about why he started drawing monsters.





Overall the movie is ambiguous and creepy. The monsters are used very sparingly, and what little you do see of them is bizarre and unsettling. However, I wish that they had used a less recognisable actor than Ray Wise to play Dekker, since he has been in so many films and TV shows that his face is immediately familiar, and he will always be Laura Palmer's father (from Twin Peaks) to me.



Digging Up the Marrow is a monster movie worth watching, especially for fans of Adam Green.

2. Lake Placid Legacy (2018)



Sam (Tim Rozon) and Jade (Katherine Barrell) are part of a group of activists and thrill-seekers who like to break into areas that are off-limits to the public. They respond to a challenge from a fellow activist to break into an abandoned research facility on an island in the middle of a lake. Given the title and the existence of the previous five movies, it's not a spoiler at this point to say that what they find when they get there is a giant freaking crocodile.



Lake Placid Legacy is the sixth and final movie in the Lake Placid series, which strangely didn't end with the fourth film, Lake Placid, The Final Chapter. It's a reboot of the previous films with a different origin story for the giant crocodiles.

My fellow Wynonna Earp fans might enjoy seeing both Katherine Barrell (Nicole Haught in Wynonna Earp) and Tim Rozon (Doc Holliday) in this movie, but since it's a monster flick it's best not to get too attached. It also features Joe Pantoliano from The Matrix. The actors do the best they can with what is, at times, laughably bad dialogue. The CGI crocodiles are pretty dodgy looking, and the plot is silly, but that's par for the course in a monster movie. I will also say in its favour that it isn't sexist, and everybody has an equal opportunity to get eaten by a massive crocodile.

3. Slaxx (2020)



Slaxx, directed by Elza Kephart, is a Canadian horror/comedy about a killer pair of jeans. Yes, really. It's the story of a young woman named Libby (Romane Denis) who lands her dream job in a trendy clothing store just before a fashion blogger named Peyton Jewels (Erica Anderson) is due to arrive and review the company's revolutionary new Super Shaper jeans. The jeans are made with genetically engineered cotton that is designed to somehow change shape to fit the individual wearer. Before they can be launched a pair of the jeans comes to life and goes on a rampage.



There is plenty of blood and gore in this movie, with some completely over the top deaths, but it isn't at all scary. Think Gremlins 2, not Gremlins 1.



Slaxx is an entertainingly silly horror film with an underlying serious point about global politics and the clothing industry. It is currently streaming on Shudder.

4. Exists (2014)



Two brothers, named Brian and Matt, invite some friends to join them for a weekend at their uncle's cabin in the woods in Texas. Unbeknownst to the other guests, they do not have permission to be out there, and Brian actually stole the keys to the cabin. On the way there, driving at night, Matt hits is momentarily distracted and hits some sort of animal with his car, but it stumbles off into the bushes and the group continue on their way. Later they discover they are not alone in the woods, and whatever is out there is angry.



Exists is another found footage horror film directed by Eduardo Sánchez (The Blair Witch Project). The two films are stylistically similar, with a lot of shaky camera work, but much of the footage in Exist is shot with Go Pro head cameras, so there is more footage from the point of view of the character and fewer shots where you can see up the characters' noses.

It's impressive that Exists manages to make something as potentially silly seeming as a sasquatch actually scary, at least at times. It helps that the director holds off from showing the entire monster early on, building up the tension for a while first with glimpses and sounds. Unfortunately, I didn't care about the characters all that much because the viewer doesn't get a lot of time to get to know most of them. As with all the best monster movies you start to side with the monster at least a little bit. The acting is all pretty good, and it was fun to learn that Brian Steele, who played Harry in Harry and the Hendersons reprised his role as Bigfoot in this movie.

Exists is a watchable monster movie about Bigfoot that delivers a few good scares.


5. Monstrous (2020)



Two friends named Jamie and Sylvia hatch a plan to find out what happened to a young female friend of theirs named Dana who has gone missing somewhere in the Adirondack mountains. Jamie suspects foul play, so when the mysterious Alex, whom Dana gave a lift through the mountains, places another ad looking for a ride he plans to confront them. Sylvia goes in his place and ends up alone in an isolated cabin with a possible serial killer and a strange creature stalking the woods outside.



Monstrous opens the same way as Exists, with somebody accidentally hitting a sasquatch with their car (not really a spoiler, it's the opening scene). However, that's where the similarities end. Instead of shaky handheld cameras and go pros, this movie has more Hollywood style camera work, with sweeping pans of beautiful countryside. It also has two lesbians as the lead characters, which I would be happy about if I hadn't correctly guessed that they were going to get all Hollywood about that too. When you see a lesbian in a horror movie the odds are that the character is going to either be killed off, turn out to be the villain, or both. The nudity felt exploitative and, frankly, a bit naff. It was like a callback to low budget vampire flicks from the '90s.

Speaking of naff, it's hard to make a person in a sasquatch suit look scary. In Monstrous, the filmmaker tried to up the tension early on by showing the creature only in silhouette, but this highlighted how fluffy it was and just made me want to touch it. Maybe that's just me. It is highly possible I will one day die trying to pet something I shouldn't. I might not even be sorry about it.



There is some blood and gore in this one, from quite early on, and a few tense moments.The performances of Anna Shields as Sylvia and Rachel Finninger as Alex were solid, and the plot was different from most monster movies, making Monstrous still worth watching for Bigfoot fans.

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