Doc Rotten's Movie Monsters of 2010: Monsters

For each weekday throughout December, Doc Rotten will be looking back at 2010 examining 20 Movie Monsters of the year. Check back each day and rate how successful the monster worked on the big screen, DVD or BluRay. On December 31, we'll look at all 20 Monsters in order of their popularity. Let's take a look at today's Movie Monster of 2010.

In Gareth Edwards’ low-budget independent sci-fi movie Monsters, the alien creatures that occupy a large swatch of land between the United States and Mexico are rarely seen but ever present throughout the pictures run time. They’re being discussed, they’re the subject of warnings and signs, they’re affecting the escape of our leads back to the States and they’re being heard as they howl in the distance or in the night. Their affect on the plot and world in which the story lives is paramount. The result drives the story through to its conclusion when the characters (and the audience) finally gets to witness the monsters in full view. So far, only seen in scope: a tentacle here, a leg there and a destroyed carcus from time to time, when they’re finally revealed it is inspired. towering above the small gas station where the two leads are awaiting the army to rescue them, two of the alien creatures sing and circle around in the nearby distance - their bodies flashing in the night as lightning illuminates the sky behind them. With a minuscule budget and creating the effects himself on a lap top, Edwards manages to do what many larger budgeted films are unable to do - create a realistic world where alien monsters have already inhabited the Earth and attempt to coexist with the human race. Spectacular.