Delayed Reaction: Little Monsters

Premise: A zombie outbreak at a military base next door interrupts a kindergarten class' field trip to a petting zoo.

 

The quickest way to my heart is swearing at children. I'm not sure why, it just is. It's the easiest inappropriate humor to get right. I'm old enough now to accept that this isn't a phase I'm going to grow past. We all have our weaknesses, and one of mine is a grown man telling a 5-year-old to "fuck off". Needless to say, this Reaction is going to be a rave. 

Little Monsters is a bizarre pairing of Shaun of the Dead and Death to Smoochy, which is a combination that seems kind of obvious in hindsight. There's nothing in this I haven't seen before, at least conceptually. There's a zombie outbreak at a semi-remote location. The protagonist is a directionless man in his 30s (Alexander England). There's a lead female/love interest (Lupita Nyong'o) who is more of a grown up and a wildcard supporting character for some flavor (Josh Gad). Frankly, if you swap out the entire Kindergarten class for Abigail Breslin, this movie is Zombieland. What it lacks in originality, the movie more than makes up for in execution. It keeps up the laughs pretty much throughout. A lot of that is thanks to Josh Gad having a blast playing off his Disney-friendly persona*. Even when England is asked to be heroic, he's never particularly mature or capable. Nyong'o is the big name in this movie. She's the poster and any review I found singled her out as the best performance in the movie. And it she is, although I want to be clear that it's more about her being over-qualified than anyone else being bad. She does a great job bringing heroic Kindergarten teacher energy to this. Even before the zombie attack, I don't know how anyone has the patience to teach kids that young.

 

*Sometimes it hard to remember that his big break was The Book of Mormon, given how much Disney has invited him in. He's never really been that "clean" though.

 

This movie does highlight something that I hadn't really thought about though: Is Lupita Nyong'o a star? I mean, she is. She has an Oscar. She's very famous. It sort of feels like she should be bigger though, right? Since her debut film, 12 Years a Slave, I only found one true lead role: Us. Otherwise, it's a bunch of supporting roles: 12 Years, Non-Stop, The Jungle Book, Star Wars, Queen of Katwe, Black Panther, and Little Monsters. That's her entire feature filmography. That's bizarrely thin, right? She ran away with an Oscar in her first movie role. And she's a beautiful, distinctive actress. I mean, look at Margot Robbie's output in nearly the same time span. She has lead roles. Franchises. More movies total. I can't figure out why Nyong'o has taken so much longer to gain momentum. Is she being more discerning about roles? Is it a race thing?...It probably is. I think I'm being willfully ignorant about this. It's just bizarre to me that Us is the first time that she was actually the main character in a movie. Little Monster is technically a lead role in terms of screen time, but she's not the POV character. What I'm trying to say is Lupita Nyong'o needs to headline more movies. She's always great.

 

The real secret sauce of Little Monsters is the treatment of the children. No matter how comical the movie gets, the movie is always grounded by the children. I love how hard Nyong'o and England try to keep the horror of the situation from those kids. There's a Life is Beautiful aspect to it that's endearing. It's nice that no matter how ill-equipped England is for this situation, he and the almost superhuman Nyong'o remain focused on not scarring the children. It's an oddly sweet movie between the funny bits.

 

This movie is a blast. It's more comedy than horror by a lot and doesn't pretend otherwise. It gets exhausting when other horror comedies pretend they can do both without sacrificing something from one or the other. Only like 2 movies have ever done that successfully. I much prefer when they are like this and commit to being a comedy, only using the horror as a premise for the comedy.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend