Love and Monsters has easily become one of the best movies I’ve watched during the Coronavirus quarantining. Funny narration, interesting monsters, smart fight scenes, and one really cute dog mix together to create an entertaining dystopian movie with a killer plot.

After a monster apocalypse started by toxic chemicals in the atmosphere wreaked havoc on Earth, humanity went to hide in bunkers to stay alive. Seven years later, Joel Dawson (played by Dylan O’Brien) hears his high school girlfriend’s voice on the bunker radio and spontaneously decides to go find her. To do so he has to leave the safety of the bunker and travel eighty miles to the coast. With the help of some survivalists, a dog named Boy, and a robot similar to an Amazon Alexa, Joel journeys above ground to go find his old girlfriend.

For starters, Love and Monsters is very well thought out. The idea that humanity banding together to blow up a meteor was what led to 95% of the world population being wiped out is certainly not cliche. The missles released toxins in the atmosphere that created giant snails, centipedes, crabs, and, my personal favorite, sky jellyfish. Every monster is unique and original, and that makes everything so much more fascinating.

Another factor of this movie that made me love it so much was the humor. Joel Dawson somehow managed to be the only single person in a colony full of survivors, and he has only one skill — he makes a good minestrone soup. The banter between Joel and Boy, the dog that saved him from a giant frog hiding in a pond, was heartwarming and a good presentation of just how lonely Joel is. Later on, he meets the young and tough Minnow (played by Ariana Greenblatt) and the intelligent Clyde (played by Michael Rooker) who proceed to show him up with their world knowledge and survival skills. Joel’s inexperience is blatant with the two travelers, and he gets teased for this relentlessly from Minnow and Clyde.

This movie came out at the perfect time. Joel is overwhelmed with loneliness, just like the majority of the world as we all sit in our houses with very little human contact. While it’s usually not the best idea to go randomly visit your old high school girlfriend after seven years of no contact, viewers can suddenly understand why Joel was driven to do that. If this were to come out at another time, I don’t think it would’ve been as good and relatable. 

Overall, Love and Monsters is a well-made apocalyptic movie with a good cast and a perfect plot. Dylan O’Brien really sells Joel’s emotions perfectly and keeps you hooked the whole time.

Dylan O’Brien fights giant frogs in new movie