What if The Sound of Music were a zombie movie? That’s roughly the premise of writer-director Abe Forsythe’s new film, Little Monsters, which premiered on Hulu last week and is currently having a limited theater run. In this case, the beautiful teacher with the sunny disposition and tendency to break into song is played by Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o and while the role is both a showcase and reminder of her considerable talents, the film around her just isn’t quite up to her level.
Part of the problem is that Lupita’s Miss Audrey Caroline isn’t the lead. Rather, it’s Alexander England’s Dave, a man-child fresh out of a relationship he sabotaged who becomes obsessed with Miss Caroline while dropping off his nephew, Felix (Diesel La Torraca), at school. Dave is precisely the kind of loser in need of reform we’re always expected to root for in these films, so, when he offers to chaperone Felix’s field trip to Pleasant Valley Farm in order to get close to Miss Caroline, it’s supposed to read as charmingly misguided rather than creepy and tone deaf in this climate. The character is so cliché and his trajectory so easy to guess that it’s almost a relief, then, when a zombie breakout happens at the US Government facility conveniently placed next door to Pleasant Farms and there’s a possibility he might die. However, while moments involving Miss Caroline distracting the kids from the zombie massacre around them by singing a song or impaling a zombie against a tree only to disguise him as a scarecrow are funny, most of the film’s humor is just obnoxiously played-out.
In large part, Little Monsters’ jokes consistently and embarrassingly fall flat for anyone who isn’t a horny, stupid teenage boy and while Dave embodies that man-child sensibility, by far the film’s worst offender is Josh Gad as Teddy McGiggle, a kid’s TV show host who turns into a foul-mouthed a-hole when the cameras are off. Not unlike Dave, Teddy starts hitting on Audrey from the moment he sees her, but we know he’s supposed to be a bad guy because he’s also mean, a closet drug addict and hates children to being willing to sacrifice them to save himself. Though Teddy is deliberately extreme in a way that must be fun for Gad to play considering how often children must recognize him from either Frozen or the live-action Beauty and the Beast, but the character is so one-note awful that he quickly grows tiresome.
Still, Gad’s performance perhaps wouldn’t be so unforgivable if the character died earlier. Considering the stunt casting and how horrible Teddy is, the character seems destined for an early, gruesome death, so it’s surprising in a bad way when he sticks around basically until the film’s climax. That said, while that break in expectations is a disadvantage, for the most part, it’s the ways Forsythe subverts traditional horror expectations.
In most films (1968’s Night of the Living Dead is a useful comparison), the beautiful woman is often relegated to damsel in distress at worst and hysterical nuisance who is so stupid she puts everyone’s lives in danger at worst. Here, it’s Audrey who is the capable, intelligent hero while Dave is the dunce constantly doing the wrong thing. When Dave not only feeds Felix something he’s allergic to, but doses himself with the epinephrine shot so that Audrey is forced to run into the zombie fray to retrieve the spare they left on the tractor. When it looks like Dave will be the one to finally save the day, he’s instead saved by another character in a scene that thrillingly and unexpectedly delivers on a plot thread that’s carried throughout the film. And while it’s unfortunate that the film still coalesces around Dave to give him a big hero moment near the end, the way the film ends with scenes that deliberately reverse the end of Night of the Living Dead is intensely satisfying.
As strong as Little Monsters‘ final scenes may be, they still can’t make up for how weak the rest of the movie is. Forsythe may intentionally be working in broad strokes in both his plotting and character work, but neither he nor most of his cast is quite able to make the film’s tone feel anything but repetitive and juvenile. Rather, Nyong’o is the only performer to manages to do anything significant, turning in a performance that’s at turns badass, funny and filled with pathos. And while, on some level, it’s worth watching the film just to enjoy her performance, it’s also not to get to the end credits without wishing Nyong’o were given something more worthy of her Oscar-winning talent.
She wasn’t GIVEN this role. She chose to play the part. And Taylor Swift chose to let them use ‘Shake it Off’. Why? Because it’s a great little film. It’s adorable. It’s well-written, well-acted, and an impressive achievement for the director.