Mon Mon Mon Monsters! (Blu-ray Review)
A group of classmates doing community service discover two flesh-eating creatures hiding in an old building. One of the creatures is able to escape, but they capture the other one, torturing her while trying to learn what she really is. It soon becomes clear that the first creature’s escape has dire consequences, as she hunts them down and stops at nothing to free her sister.
Film
The peculiarly named Mon Mon Mon Monsters! is the story of a couple of high school bullies who can’t help but to get into trouble at every turn. After constantly bullying Shu-Wei (Yu-Kai Teng) the gang, and even Shu-Wei, are given community service. They are tasked with cleaning out an old building. What they soon discover is that the decrepit building is home to two feral flesh-eating ghouls. Sisters, in fact. The boys don’t seem too scared since they actually live for the thrill of it all.
And in that paragraph, especially the last part, is why Mon Mon Mon Monsters! fails at conveying terror. You have a group of extremely unlikable (putting it mildly) bullies who are more fascinated by capturing the ghouls than they are of being scared and running for their lives. It’s as if the bullies all of sudden became empowered by the ghouls, who in my opinion, are almost like the protagonists. The bullies are the antagonists and they are winning.
Even secondary characters are portrayed as uncaring an apathetic scumbags. I understand that the film is supposed to be a satire of sorts. It deals with bullying to an insane degree along with young people completely absorbed by social media and their personal mobile devices. All of that is fine and dandy and I get it, but there is this nihilistic overtone that just hammers the film at every turn. Some folks say that Fight Club is a nihilistic film, but at least that film has a redemption arc to it. Mon Mon Mon Monsters! does not. With two flesh eating ghouls out and about the students seems to have more fun taking selfies with them as their classmates are being eaten and burned alive.
While I was watching Mon Mon Mon Monsters! I was reminded of a cult-film from over ten years ago called Deadgirl, which was about a couple of students kidnapping a girl who is a zombie and cannot die, so they sort of make her their pet and imprison her in a school boiler room. Now that film was actually good and had various arcs that gelled throughout. Also, those that deserved it got their just deserts in the end. In this film the abuse that is thrown upon the female ghouls is immense, but when they are unleashed on the jerks that are attacking them, the jerks take it on with stride.
In any event, as you can see, I was not a fan and I am only giving the film a tw0 star because I liked the ghouls and the carnage they unleashed. I hated the asshole bullies and all of the apathetic characters involved.
Video 
Encoding: AVC/MPEG-4
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Clarity/Detail: The transfer for Mon Mon Mon Monsters! is strong – contrast and sharpness levels stay strong. There were only a couple of instances of softness here and there, but that may have had something to do with the computer generated imagery used in some scenes.
Black Levels: Black levels were quite strong, and I only detected one or two instances of light crush – nothing that would make me tank the video score by any means.
Color Reproduction: The color palette goes from cool to warm throughout. No issues of banding or pixelation were present.
Flesh Tones: Everyone has a flawless complexion, outside of our two ghouls. The students almost seem to have been run through a filter, but that’ sjust the clarity of the digital photography and Blu-ray transfer.
Noise/Artifacts: I only caught the faintest of digital artifacts here and there, but nothing too distracting.
Audio
Audio Format(s): Mandarin DTS-HD 2.0, English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
Dynamics: This is a very aggressive 2.0 soundtrack. I initially thought that the sound levels were going to be mediocre. I’m glad I was mistaken. The 2.0 mix is very aggressive and distinct. The action and bloodletting do a great job of sticking to the left and right channels without turning into a jumbled mess.
Low Frequency Extension: N/A
Surround Sound Presentation: N/A
Dialogue Reproduction: Dialogue levels shriek through in crass comedy and horrifying terror. Those levels came through loud and clear, without any hints of clipping or distortion.
Extras
N/A
Summary
As much as I really wanted to like Mon Mon Mon Monsters! – by the end, I just could not. I was reminded by those eternal words that Michael Caine spoke in The Dark Knight: “some men just want to watch the world burn.” This is exactly what I got out of the film in the end, and it is unfortunate, because the Blu-ray looks and sounds great. It makes me wonder why there were no special features included. The technical specifications are what elevates the score a bit. Mon Mon Mon Monsters! is only recommended to the hardcore horror fan — maybe as a rental.
Mon Mon Mon Monsters! on
Blu-ray & DVD February 4, 2020!
ORDER NOW!
