User reviews

I am a fan of the idea of having a film use no dialogue. (Characters only sometimes say the names of other characters, so at least the main actors are more likely to get fairly compensated as speaking parts.) I don't mind the campy fake blood as long as there is suspense and a good storyline. Cinematography definitely had good moments of creating suspense. Only twice in the film did I find myself in a moment that seemed laughable and took me out of my immersion. One was a "The Shinning" spoof of the "Here's Johnny" scene that played out impressively well, especially by a young child actress in the place of Duvall, but even in its abbreviated form, the scene is just too long to not be a bit dull and out-of-place. The other moment was when our main character stops herself from stealing some french-fries left behind by an antagonist and pouts. I can see how they intended to make this a moment of showing human-ness and generating pity for the child, but it instead came off as an out-of-place moment of levity. I can forgive those things however. The thing that really irked me was the stereotypes used to depict the "badguy" archtype; Joint-smoking, beer-drinking gamer playing violent MMO shooters late into the night, has long unkempt hair and a black baseball cap or hoody with open jacket and ripped jeans, sustaining on cup noodle and fast food, neglecting an otherwise gorgeous home that is taken for granted and absolutely infested with cockroaches. And let's not forget this is supposed to be a child predator. It's just hitting every checkmark for a bad stereotype. When we got our second villain in the story, things started to pick up with suspense.

It's no spoiler that this film doesn't contain any dialogue -- or maybe it is, but one that is given by Netflix themselves right from the onset. Not knowing this would have given the film more tension, something that this Indonesian made for television movie is sadly lacking.

No cliche is left untouched here. Repetitive scenes abound (the heroine hides under the bed, behind a door, in a cupboard, and this time and again). There is no surprising twist (oops, was that another spoiler?). There are no intricate plotlines to be unraveled. No attempt is made to give the capturer and his partner personality; the house with its bland interior doesn't even look like it's their own.

In conclusion, despite its rating this is essentially a children's movie, in both senses of the word, and childish at that. Would have been more effective when shortened to, let's say, twenty minutes.

The no dialogue thing is an interesting take that can work, but the show is the same thing over and over. The child is painted as both brave and smart yet also quite dumb, making quick moves at opportune times yet falling for silly things that would be way more intuitive in the first place. Maybe that was intentional? But it felt inconsistent and all the characters felt a bit basic and overly stereotypical.

But more importantly for almost the entire thing there is this terrible background feed of this sort of white noise highly degraded sound that comes in and out and it genuinely was terrible. Like gave me a headache and caused my to almost watch the film on mute terrible. I created this account literally to share that this sound ruined the movie. It goes on. The entire hour and a half. It's horrible.

I regret staying up late for this.

I regret staying up late for this.

I regret staying up late for this.

I hate that stupid sound.

I enjoyed this movie for what it was it's kept me engaged and it was suspenseful. I don't think people can handle the lack of dialog but I thought the actor's performance was good I didn't have to have dialog to understand what was going on and enjoy the movie. The little girls is such a baddie! My only complaint was the music was a little misleading sometimes. Example sometime it sounded like someone was knocking on the door when they weren't, but over all it was a decent flick. If you like suspenseful movies I say give it a go, the jump scares were predictable if horror is you genre but overall fun watch.

It's a felony for a thriller to be a snooze fest and make the audience doze off instead of being at the edge of their seats. I fell asleep a couple of times during my viewing, so for me Monster kinda failed its purpose.

As a thriller, Monster failed to maintain its suspense throughout as the pacing was quite slow despite the fact that it clocked in less than 90 minutes. The scoring also didn't work for me, I just don't feel that it's thrilling enough to aid the pacing of the movie.

I don't mind the "no dialog" approach this movie took at all, I really just wish it were more suspenseful with faster pacing and more intense scoring perhaps?

I don't hate the idea of a film having no dialog. Monster is as simple as a concept as it gets, and realistically, dialog wouldn't be a major aspect of the story anyway. No, the biggest flaw with Monster isn't the LACK of sound, it's the EXCESS of sound.

I just saw Challengers and that was a movie where sound design and mixing were a major aspect of what made it great. This is an example of a movie where the sound design is truly awful. It was a droning, crackling score that initially had me wondering if my TV speakers were broken. (Thankfully, no...I moved to another TV to finish the movie and it was the same situation)

This droning score plays through the ENTIRETY of the movie and it's unbelievably annoying. Not to forget about the score, which is so melodramatic and intrusive that it veers into very corny territory. Music is so important because it can set or ruin a film's tone. Here, the over dramatic music and over use of a terrible score made this film feel cheaper than it needed to. The last time sound made me feel so negatively about a movie was probably Tenet.

As for non-auditory aspects, I think it's fair to warn people that Monster is a very dark movie that follows two children as they attempt to escape a child murderer. Given that...I do wish we did get SOME dialog. It's such a disturbing premise that some levity and humanity on screen would be welcome. Some explanation as to what's going on? What the larger story is here? Or even some of the motivations of the admittedly detestable adults we see in the film would add a layer of intrigue here aside from the relatively compact story we see on screen.

I generally like to support foreign films and go a bit easier on them, but I think Monster needed some tweaking to actually work. As of now, it's a forgettable and undercooked film.

If you're considering watching it, I'd suggest poking yourself in the eye repeatedly instead - at least that way, you'll have a legitimate reason for your agony.

"Monster" is a colossal disaster in every sense of the word. From its aimless plot to its lifeless characters, it's a film that manages to disappoint at every turn.

The characters are as shallow as a puddle, the thing that didn't had dialogue is a cringeworthy collection of clichés, and the special effects are laughably bad. But what truly sets "Monster" apart is its complete lack of self-awareness; it's so bad that it's infuriating.

In short, "Monster" is an insult to cinema. Save yourself the frustration and avoid it at all costs.

This movies is one of the worst movie I ever watched my whole life, and for years I am subscribing almost all of streaming services aired in Indonesia. The director should stop making horror movie. The movie is trying to be artistic with its effort of having no dialogue, but this is making a lot of scenes is not making sense. Kidnapped children should be really afraid and screaming back or cursing towards the kidnapers, but in this movie no. There's no explanation throughout the movie regarding the lack of dialogue as well. My advice if you haven't watched it, just skip it. It's really a waste of time.

I'll never tell - oh wait that is from a different movie. So no pun intended - also there are a few words spoken here (I did not count them, in case you were wondering) ... overall it does stay ... well "silent" when it comes to dialog. This is not a silent film though - I read someone even being annoyed by ... noises. Just in case you were wondering.

I actually am not a fan of this "gimmick" driven movies. And while one of the main characters might have chosen a different path ... the movie was able to get my attention and was suspenseful from start to finish. Is it predictable? For sure. Are the bad guys way over the top? Also true (well true in the sense of within the movie and what it does) ... it is a thriller in the end ... and it does try something kind of new ... I've seen worse, but I get it, if you are not swayed ...

Okay, that is a tiny bit unfair, but given that most of their mainstream horror output is from legendary copy/paster Rocky Soraya, I feel like it's an appropriate joke. Monster is an Indonesian adaptation of The Boy Behind the Door, though with everything applied in a way that doesn't work quite as well when put together..... The visuals are the only good part, with some great shots and an overall suspense building aesthetic focusing on close and tight shots. There are even some well bits of swivel work that are done more than well enough, and the practicals have some satisfactory blood and violence to them. The killer doesn't really have any menace, but I feel like that's more in the overall acting and writing..... Speaking of which, the writing is one of the more lacking elements. While the lack of dialogue is a good choice, the story is very formulaic, with no actual surprises and no attempt at originality. There's very little to the characters too. No real substance to speak of..... The soundtrack feels out of tune. There's this odd western tune that always takes the viewer out of the scene, as well as some composed bits that are never timed right and never properly fit. While the sound effects work well enough, there isn't enough effort placed on them for sinister and/or unsettling effects..... The acting isn't great. The two kids, played by Anantya Kirana and Sultan Hamonangan do as good as they can, but their facial expressions are limited to either mild terror or high levels of fear, while the other two just go through their motions. The antagonists aren't exactly spooky or creepy, they're just annoying.

If you want to find out for yourself, Monster is on Netflix. If you want to save time and effort, just watch The Boy Behind the Door.

For what it was it was kinda good even though the girl makes really dumb decisions that no one in real life would make, other then that there's a really obnoxiously loud background noise through out the whole film like a loud frequency type of sound I think they thought it would add suspense or a scary feel too the film but it was too annoying and repetitive instead and it was more of a prolonged use of the sound. For a low budget film it was actually kinda cool, the no dialogue thing was different and woulda been great if it wasn't for that weird background noise they played all film lol I guess try it just watch it on low volume.

If you seen the US movie "The Boy Behind the Door" then you know what I am talking about. This is literally a replica with no dialogue. Not sure if they intended for this to be a remake or not but this version is terrible. I do give kudos to the girl in the movie, she can definitely go far with her acting when she gets older. The suspense in the beginning is good at times but then I'm like, this is giving me Deja vu because I've seen this already. This movie shouldn't have been made but I guess when there's nothing else to watch on a Friday night and you want to kill time then this is it lol...

"Monster" is an okay movie, I guess. Wait, on second thought, it's not that great. It starts out as a rather unpleasant watch. Then after while, it gets repetitious. It never gets boring but it does get stuck in second gear. The first half of the movie is better than the second half. The no dialogue is fine for a while but then it ends up being a silly, rather ineffective gimmick. For a movie with a very friendly running time (86 minutes), "Monster" begins to feel like a long movie. 86 minutes long or not, it should have been about twenty minutes shorter. "Monster" is another straight-to-Netflix dud.

I recently watched the Indonesian film 🇮🇩 Monster (2023) on Netflix. The storyline follows two friends who are kidnapped after school, thrown into a trunk, and driven to a remote mountainside shack. One of the friends manages to escape, but instead of fleeing, she sneaks back into the house to try and rescue her friend from the monster...

Directed by Rako Prijanto (The Clerics), the film stars Marsha Timothy (The Raid 2), Alex Abbad (The Raid 2), Anantya Kirana (Beautiful Pain), and Sultan Hamonangan (Tira).

Monster is a film with a solid concept that could have been executed better. The opening does a great job of setting up the circumstances, with a strong atmosphere and minimal dialogue that suits the premise. However, while the setup is effective, the intensity is lacking. The horror and torture elements fall short, with a chainsaw sequence that could have been much more impactful. The storyline and conclusion are fairly straightforward and predictable.

In conclusion, Monster has a solid premise but stumbles in its execution. I would rate it a 5/10 and recommend it only with tempered expectations.