Monster tries to make the most of the brilliant, mystical Artic circle, but in the end, for me, the script and pace was a massive let down.
Monster is the starts with a missing persons investigation. The lead investigators are a combative couple - a prodigal daughter with a curious past who has returned to care for her ailing father, and a young detective battling his own personal demons.
Missing turns to murder and the body count rapidly multiplies as the layers of the small community are peeled away to reveal infidelity, religious zealotism, drug trafficking and more. The investigators flounder as the looping plotlines entangle them and they push up against their own inadequacies (at a certain point one concedes that they are pretty hopeless at the job of detecting).
The cinematography is lovely and some of the performances are compelling, but the pace is inconsistent and neither the undercurrent of mysticism nor the tightening circle of a murder investigation are fully realised.
As the plot tangents multiplied, my suspension of disbelief was challenged by a few too many convenient coincidences, not to mention police work that would make the Keystone Cops feel like an elite force. I'm pretty sure that a 21st century Norwegian police force, even a small one, in the remote northern reaches, wouldn't settle for repeated crime scene violations and un-bagged, unsecured evidence being traipsed about the countryside. I swear I'm not being pedantic. It's those kind of details that serve as a huge distraction, particularly when the plot itself is at risk of sinking.
I think Monster tries too hard to do too much, and in the end become so muddied that none of the storylines feel satisfactorily told.
