Aliens have crashed in Mexico, and the US government builds a wall to stop them, and the Mexican police are out to destroy them. Monsters flirts with a District 9–style allegory, the creatures standing in, perhaps, for illegal aliens. But the movie is far more obsessed with being a low-budget calling card for the myriad talents of Gareth Edwards, who wrote, directed, photographed, and did the special effects. Too bad the story, though atmospheric, is so familiar and slight. A newspaper photographer (Scoot McNairy) and a bland chick (Whitney Able), his boss's daughter, cross the Infected Zone together, slowly falling in love as they elude the jellyfish-like creatures' lethal tentacles.
