MONSTER SUMMER - Mark Reviews Movies

Monster Summer, Pastime Pictures

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | October 3, 2024

Harkening back to the kid adventure movies of the 1980s, Monster Summer sees a group of pre-teens trying to find the source of strange happenings in their sleepy island town. Despite the seeming fun of that premise, this is a surprisingly dour tale about child abduction, trauma, and grief. The underlying supernatural element certainly gives the material some sense of separation from the harsh realities to which it's alluding, but that also means the mostly jovial tone clashes with the movie's darker suggestions.

The plot, set in 1997, revolves around a group of friends living on Martha's Vineyard, which becomes a tourist hotspot in the summer when the kids are school-free. The de facto center of the group is Noah (Mason Thames), an aspiring journalist, following in his absent father's footsteps. The screenplay by Bryan Schulz and Cornelius Uliano is a bit cagey about the boy's father, as he and his mother (played by Nora Zehetner), who runs a bed and breakfast out of the family home, talk around why he's no longer living with them. There's not a particularly good reason for that, except that it keeps the mood light for a bit and allows for an emotionally charged revelation later.

Let's just say there's a good amount of misery on the island, and there's plenty more to come after the arrival of a mysterious station wagon on the ferry into town. It starts stalking the streets at low speeds, and while Noah and his best friend Ben (Noah Cottrell) are only concerned with playing baseball and going to a professional game and the girl they both like, those weird occurrences are about to hit home.

While night-swimming with the girl, Ben encounters a cloaked figure on the pier, who offers a warning and jumps into the water. Soon enough, a bright light appears under the kids, and Ben is pulled down by an unseen force. He's discovered on the beach the following morning, apparently uninjured, but Ben now just spends his time staring at nothing in particular and barely speaks. Whatever happened to him, the kid is traumatized by it.

More kids start undergoing severe changes in mood and personality, and it's enough to catch the attention of a local retired cop named Gene (Mel Gibson), the fearsome loner on the island whom Noah discovers isn't worthy of that reputation. He and his pals snuck on to the stranger's property, with Noah hoping to find some dirt on the guy to submit to the local paper as an article, but after other children briefly disappear and are found with that dead-eyed glare, the two team up to figure out what's happening.

Noah suspects a witch, since that's the gist of the description of the only witnesses. Gene is the far more practical sort, who doesn't believe in supernatural monsters but knows too well of the existence of human ones. He spent a career trying to stop them, because, like Noah, he understands unthinkable loss.

The story becomes quite heavy and grim, which is admirable on a certain level, since the entire plot serves as an on-the-nose allegory for exactly what it is: a predator hunting, hurting, and psychologically devastating children. On the other hand, though, the story is treated as a lark and with plenty of humor. It's rather jarring on a tonal level.

That light-heartedness includes Noah suspecting their house guest Miss Halverson (Lorraine Bracco) is a prime suspect, simply because she keeps odd hours and dresses in black, and Gene's gruffly jokey manner about his reputation in town (Speaking of jarring, a couple of his dark jokes about kidnapping and killing don't feel right coming from him after we learn the man's back story). Kevin James even appears as the local newspaper editor, who doesn't want the island to get a bad rap that might affect the tourism economy, and most of Noah's friends treat his suspicions as a joke, too.

Admittedly, there is some fun to be had with the premise, when the movie actually allows for such a thing and isn't treating the threat in such a direct—especially when it comes to Gene and why he's so invested in the case—or heavy-handed manner. Director David Henrie taps into a sense of nostalgia for the specific genre of movie he's emulating, as well as, more generally, for those childhood days of riding bikes and looking for—and often finding—mystery and/or adventure everywhere.

Considering just how dreary and melancholy and insidious some of this becomes, one almost wonders if the filmmakers are attempting to subvert this old-fashioned genre or those good feelings about the good-old days of such relatively carefree existence. At its core, Monster Summer is too innocent—or, at least, trying to be so—and sincere for that reading to hold, so it's more likely just the usual case of a movie being misguided in how it's telling its story.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products