LITTLE MONSTERS Review
When I was a wee little kid in first grade, school was heavenly. A day of curriculum, state-mandated physical activity, and cheap yet somehow highly chowable lunch food was the routine day in and day out, but through that numbing routine emerged an ethereal ray of sunshine: Miss Stephens, my teacher. Miss Stephens was both an engaged educator and humane pseudo-familial figure for me, someone who in my eyes was the smartest and nicest person in the room. I never saw her as my mother (who is in fact a lovely woman in her own right) but Miss Stephens was what one would call the ideal first grade teacher, someone who was fun to be with and learn from. Of course, adding to my deified view of her was the fact that she was almost objectively attractive, in almost that kind of “greek statue” sort of way, classical and out of your reach, but awe-inducing nonetheless. With Miss Stephens, school felt like home away from home.
As great as she was, I’m not sure how Miss Stephens would’ve handled a zombie apocalypse. I’d like to think she would try her absolute best and at the very least, protect me all the way to the end but other than that I don’t like our odds. The same can not be said for Lupita Nyong’o’s Miss Caroline, a kindergarten teacher in the mold of Miss Stephens trapped with her kindergarten pupils in an Australian zoo surrounded by bloodthirsty zombies in director/writer Abe Forsythe’s LITTLE MONSTERS. You see, dear reader, Miss Caroline’s bubbly personality and talent for Taylor Swift ukulele covers are just as impressive as her skills at zombie dismemberment.
Shame the rest of the film can’t match this intoxicating central character. In fact, Nyong’o, despite first billing is moreso a supporting character to Alexander England’s man-child, Dave. As the film opens in an amusing montage, we see Dave and his (now ex) girlfriend, Sara (Nadia Townsend) in the midst of a break-up due in part to Dave’s immaturity and wariness of having a kid. Stuck on his sister’s (Kat Stewart) couch after being kicked out, Dave smokes and jerks off with aplomb when not guiding his sister’s cute son (Diesel La Torraca) down the path to slackerdom. However, after a chance meeting with the mesmerizing Miss Caroline during a routine drop-off, Dave begins to make his moves on his nephew’s teacher leading him to impulsively volunteer as a chaperone for the tots during a trip to the zoo. As fate would have it, an American military complex researching the undead is right next door and when the military (for the millionth time in cinematic history) screws up containment, the flesh-eaters are unleashed onto the nearby zoo trapping Dave, Miss Caroline, and the vulgar, closeted sex-addict and children’s tv host, Teddy McGiggle (Josh Gad) with a bunch of kindergartners.
While England does enough to not make Dave a completely irredeemable asshat by film’s end, the film’s biggest sin is mitigating Nyong’o’s character to second fiddle. Indeed, a film centered solely around the plight of a bubbly teacher and her students staving off the army of the undead feels like it holds much more treasure than that of the very tired story of a man-child becoming less child and more man. Nevertheless, Forsythe has enough enjoyable components here that suggest a filmmaker with imagination and wit to spare (and hopefully the skill to utilize later on in future projects) as his story and set-up is very straight and to the point with little posturing as characters are quick to identify the undead as zombies instead of some useless moniker like “them”, “things”, etc. and even the fact that a military complex is situated so close to a zoo is treated as commonplace. Of course, Forsythe finds gold in Miss Caroline the character and Miss Nyong’o the performer. As a character, the idea to focus primarily on school children and their bubbly teacher (along with a vulgar slacker and sex addict tv personality) is less traversed territories for the genre which results in a zombie film that feels more like GREMLINS than DAWN OF THE DEAD with its focus on characters and situations rather than gore or any grand societal messages. With Miss Caroline, Nyong’o delivers effortless heart and warmth as a teacher everyone’s kids loves to be with in addition to putting in a pretty convincing physical performance ranging from her violent interactions with the undead to even the heart-wrenching as seen when looks of doubt and despair threaten to break through her sunny exterior in the face of impossible and violent circumstances.
Despite her best and credible efforts, the rest of LITTLE MONSTERS fails to converge into something greater than its parts. While most of the performances all have their moments of humor, the characters outside of Miss Caroline are rather flat but you know, it’s always nice to see Josh Gad go back some adult comedy even if his character is more amusing in idea than execution (granted, he can curse the hell out of some kindergartners). Even so, Forsythe crafts a pretty well-made and at times, stylistic film with the inclusion of some striking images that occasionally arise from the zombie chaos such as Nyong’o drenched in blood despite her bright yellow sunny dress providing a ray of sunshine to proceedings. In regards to the writing, Forsythe works in broad strokes which can work in humorous scenarios but less so in character development or inter-relationships (such as the less than stellar budding romance between Dave and Miss Caroline). Indeed, even with his setting of a zombie film inside of a zoo with kids, the stakes and imagination at work seem a little diluted as Forsythe never has the audience feel genuine worry for the kids getting chomped on (which ironically makes the film feel untrue to its general conceit) in addition to never really making the setting stand out outside of the fact that it’s a zoo as overall the film could’ve been set anywhere.
Overall, LITTLE MONSTERS stands out as a zombie film due in large part to Forsythe’s kooky set-up and Nyong’o’s energetically game performance. While the film never truly reaches the off-kilter heights it aspires for, there seems to be enough quirks here and there throughout the movie that will keep most audiences hungry to see how the plight of Miss Caroline and co. ends. Even so, if you like cute zoo animals, especially baby goats you may not want to miss this movie.
2.5/5
