E's Reviews RETRO: The Monster Squad

The Monster Squad is a movie I had owned for a couple of years now and yet had never seen. It was one of those films that kind of fell under the radar for me as a child since my parents or any of my older family members ever showed it to me, so after buying it and hearing all the buzz surrounding it, I decided to review it for y’all. Well...buckle up...cause we’re going monster hunting!

The Monster Squad stars child actors Andre Gower, Robby Kiger, Brent Chalem, and Ryan Lambert, as well as Stephen Macht as Del - Sean’s dad (that’s literally his name in the credits), Duncan Regehr as Count Dracula, and Tom Noonan as Frankenstein’s Monster. The film is about five youngsters who find themselves up against the combined might of Dracula, the Mummy, the Gill Man and Frankenstein's Monster who arrive in town in search of a magic amulet. These kids are part of a group that are huge monster movie fans. They love monsters so much, one of them is even wearing a Stephen King Rules t-shirt the first time we meet them. Awesome, right? Well....

Let me get the issues I have with the movie out of the way right off the bat. The film itself felt like a giant rip off/mashup of The Goonies and Stephen King’s IT, two movies that center around a group of kids that are losers and have to deal with a crazy adventure/evil monster. It felt like the director was trying to go for that certain feel, like he had seen The Goonies, read IT, and decided ‘Man, that would be awesome!’ But instead of an evil clown demon that feeds on fear, we get the classic Universal monsters added into the mix. Every character in this movie was written to be an almost exact clone of one of The Goonies, except they’re not given the time to actually develop into a proper character. I watched this film and I just didn’t connect with any of them, not one, which made me really sad since I had heard the buzz and was really looking forward to seeing it (since I’m a huge Universal monsters fan and love movies like IT).

Despite the adventure-like feel, I felt like the movie was kind of bland. There wasn’t enough horror to fill my appetite for horror, there wasn’t enough adventure to make me excited, there wasn’t enough tension or thrills to keep me on the edge of my seat, and the characters were just so obviously a rip off of The Goonies, but without that thing that actually made the characters from The Goonies stand out; heck, the character of Horace was 100% a rip off of Chunk from The Goonies! And midway through I thought to myself ‘Okay, you’re too harsh on this movie, maybe it was made to connect with kids who are like, 12 or 13, and who love monster movies. Maybe you’re just too old to appreciate it,’ but then we see a few splashes of blood and some minor gore and it became too obvious this was not made for kids. At least not those under the age of 13. There’s even a giant portal thing that’s so obviously taken from Evil Dead 2...let that part sink in. It just felt wholly unoriginal to me.

So now that I’ve ripped the movie a new one for it’s shortcomings, let’s get to the good bits. The acting is surprisingly good for a movie whose prime characters are all kids. They play their roles well, they have decent presence on screen, and the back and forth between them felt natural. The effects of the monsters themselves were actually really really good. It was so cool watching the Wolf-Man transform in the phone booth, and the Gill Man (Creature From The Black Lagoon) when he appeared from the sewer? So awesome. Dracula was also very good. The effects, like I said, were fantastic. I’d even go as far as saying that some of them could even beat out some of the effects of today’s films. The plot of the film I was also 100% behind. Dracula and co. want this amulet to bring about a world of darkness, the Monster Squad finds out, they go to stop it. It was simple, and it could’ve been entertaining enough, if it wasn’t for everything I disliked about the movie (which I stated above).

All in all, I didn’t absolutely hate this film. I thought the acting was good, the monsters awesome, the effects of the creatures were great. I think I might’ve fallen for the hype that surrounded it and built it up in my head so much that when I finally saw it, it’s shortcomings destroyed it for me. It also felt so unoriginal, with things in the screenplay that were obviously taken from other movies or books. But I can see how this could also be a great Halloween movie, something you put on during that most awesome of holidays with a bowl of popcorn and the kids, and just enjoy something simple and silly.

Final Score: 7/10