Monster Summer – Dir: David Henrie (13th Floor Film Review)

Monster Summer brings a little witchcraft to Martha’s Vineyard and Mel Gibson along with it.

Starring: Mason Thames, Mel Gibson, Lorraine Bracco, Kevin James and Abby James Witherspoon

Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Thanks to accusations of domestic violence mixed with alcohol abuse and anti-semantic and homophobic statements, Mel Gibson’s stock has dropped from Road Warrior to a town hermit known as “old man Carruthers”.

Monster Summer is teen/pre-teen adventure/fantasy/horror mystery with too many hyphens and not enough plot.

Monster Summer

Set in 1997 in Martha’s Vineyard, we meet a group of kids…Noah (Mason Thames), Eugene (Julian Lerner), Sammy (Abby James Witherspoon) and Ben (Noah Cottrell) on summer vacation, playing baseball and hanging out. Noah, an aspiring newspaper journalist (like his late father) seems to be their leader but its Ben who seems destined for greatness (and the Boston Red Sox) thanks to his batting skills.

The film begins with eerie music, a stormy sky, an old cabin and suddenly…a body hurling though a window. Young Ronnie Harlow is alive but not well. In fact he seems to be in some kind of catatonic-zombie-like state.

The small town is abuzz in rumours as to who or what did this to one of the children. Young Noah sees this mystery as an opportunity to write the story that with get him published in the local rag and send him on the way to journalism school.

Noah is convinced the mystery revolves around creepy old Mr. Carruthers who has been living like a hermit since the disappearance of his own son a decade ago.

Oh, and another creepy character, the all-black-garbed Miss. Halverson (Lorraine Bracco) is boarding in Noah’s house.

Monster Summer

So the stage is set.

This is director David Henrie’s second feature and he does his best with the material he’s working with, throwing in a few nods to “inspirations” like The Goonies and ET, while keeping the show moving along.

But the script ain’t great, and the budget doesn’t allow for any state of the art special effects. There are silver bullets, broomsticks and any other number of clichés to deal with as, one by one, the kids are transformed into zombies.  It’s up to Noah to solve the mystery and write his story.

So we are left with a reasonably entertaining plot that whose story arc will surprise no one over the age of 25. The actors are, for the most part, up to the job, with Gibson being the obvious star and Bracco given little to do but look and sound scary.

Monster Summer is not great, it’s not awful, it’s just meh.

Marty Duda

Monster Summer opens in cinemas today. Click here for tickets and showtimes.