Monster Man

I don't want to talk about it.

Even for a film of a genre with an expectation of the unthinkable, Monster Man is quite shocking. Billed as a “horror-comedy by the writer-director of 100 Girls,” the film tells the story of a man driving to his ex-girlfriend’s wedding while his friend repeatedly calls him a wussy. Along the way the pair is beset by the typical horrors of rural America (roadkill in the bed, decapitated Winnebago driver, etc.) which are a welcome reprieve from Justin Ulrich’s incomprehensible single-entendres. Along the way the pair gropes, then picks up an allegedly stunning hitchhiker, and the three respond to these occult happenings the in the only sensible way: brutally insulting everyone they meet at gas stations. This contempt for Midwesterners even appears in the characters’ private moments: as Aimee Brooks retorts while splayed out in front of some Nascar in the motel, “These fucking rednecks must have IQs the same number as the size of my underwear to watch this!” Really, if you’re going to be pretentious about how much hotter you are than someone’s intellect, at least have some syntax about it. At some point they are pursued by a big truck and find some body parts in their food, but no visceral or automotive horror can approach the film’s real monster: the ten minutes of Yoda-themed sex that would have Kevin Smith saying, “These people overlook the subtly of my work.”

Not only do Monster Man’s jabs at edginess create a hostile circle of dislikable heroes, they detract from what should be its greatest strength. In putting on such a front of cool, the film denies itself the kind of camp that makes the worst horror so wonderfully indulgent. It is, at least, a unique kind of bad, to be watched only by the deeply masochistic. Really only two things can be said about this movie: it must be seen to be believed, and it must never be seen.