The Monster (2016) - Decent enough horror

'The Monster' is a pretty simple little film - a mother (and that term describes the woman in the loosest possible terms, as she can hardly be called 'doting!') takes her daughter for a late night drive across country, only for their car to break down and become victim to a - largely unseen - monster.

Having only the two primary characters does mean that you get a decent amount of time (approximately half the film) to get to know the pair of them before the beastie really starts trying to do its worst.  As I eluded to, the mother is pretty much a waste of space at the beginning of the film when we first meet her, so there's plenty of room for her character to grow, so to speak.  Plus the little girl who plays her daughter is certainly a talented young actress who isn't in any way as annoying as about 90% of kids who appear in films these days!

It really is as much of a character piece as it is about the creature.  Yes, the nasty ol' monster does show up during the second half of the film and it is pretty decent when it comes to special effects.  The film is hardly 'high budget' and they money must have been used for the creature, as it does look quite different to most recognisable on-screen beasties.

The human stars also behave in - I guess you'd call in - a 'sane' way.  By that I mean that you (hopefully!) won't be screaming too much at the on-screen characters due to them making all those ludicrously-bad decisions that people always seem to make in horror movies.

However, despite the lack of characters being a plus in that we can really get to know them, it is also a kind of drawback as we - the audience - know that neither of them are going to bite the bullet (or just disappear down the monster's throat) anywhere through the movie (and you'll have to wait until the end to see if they do make it out of this situation).

It's a tense little horror movie that does its best with a limited budget to build characters and not reveal too much of the creature until it ultimately has to.  It's possibly a little 'over-long' and could have done with having a few of the more 'filler' scenes left on the cutting room floor, but, overall, anyone who's interested in horror shouldn't feel like they've wasted their time sitting down to this.

6/10 May just keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights