ALL SCI-FI

orzel-w · Galactic Ambassador Joined: 19 Sep 2014 Posts: 1876

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I had high hopes for this one, a sequel to the 2010 Monsters. Alas, it was not meant to be.

First, the title is misleading. The "Dark Continent" is traditionally Africa. This movie takes place in the Middle East.

The "monsters" are still well crafted, even improved, but they become incidental to the story. They make only what amounts to cameo appearances. They serve merely as another excuse for us to have a military presence in the Middle East and to put ourselves in a position to be in conflict with the local population. It could just as well have been another Afghanistan war movie.

Instead of examining the impact of the alien presence on humans or learning anything more about them, the reasons for their being here or anything about their physiology or sociology, etc., the movie focuses on the soldiers, their macho camaraderie, their interaction with the locals, and on and on.

It's about the impact of our presence on the local population and vice versa. It's been done, people!

We even get the whole treatment of the characters' pre-military Detroit background, their motives for enlisting, their drug-and-sex orgy before shipping out... (The latter has changed a lot since "the old days" when the characters just went for an evening at a nightclub for drinking, dancing, and singing.)

Even when the group is being killed off one-by-one in the field, it isn't death by aliens; it's from bullets and IEDs.
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...or not...

WayneO
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Bud Brewster · Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2022 9:58 am Post subject:

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Thanks for the warning, Wayne. Sounds like I should put this on my list of movies I need to walk a wide circle around. Heck, I'm not really that crazy about the first one either. Sad

For interested parties, here's the trailer.

___________ Monsters: Dark Continent - Trailer

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

tmlindsey · Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2022 4:55 pm Post subject:

This movie is a hot, steaming pile of garbage. I wasn't a fan of the first one when I eventually saw it (adequate is about the only thing I can say about it). But this one was so terrible with unlikable characters that I gave up on it twice; once about 15 minutes in and a few days later I tried to continue and "hopped" right out about the 30 minute mark.
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"Have you never wondered what it would be like to walk between the ticks and tocks of Time?"