‘The Monster Beneath Us’ FrightFest 2024 Review: A Regrettably Slow And Uneventful Victorian Era Horror Story
The makers of The Monster Beneath Us apparently watched Downton Abbey and thought that it needed more monsters. So, they presented viewers with a costume drama set in a sprawling English manor house, which may or may not have something lurking in its basement. However, the filmmakers seemed to be unsure if they even wanted to include the monster because it barely appeared.
Set in 1898, the film follows Lady Grace Abbington (Becca Hirani), who moves into a sprawling country manor with her son, Charles (Marshall Hawkes), after the untimely death of her husband. The family struggles to adapt to their new life in the gigantic house at first, and their lone maid, Mrs. Gray (Nicola Wright), does her best to help them fit in. The actors seemed to be trying their best, but they obviously struggled to make their fanciful Victorian-era dialogue and their upper-class English accents sound convincing at times. Although there’s nothing approaching the level of farcical absurdness of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, it was still clear that dialect coaches could have been used to help the actors sound more convincing.
The Monster Beneath Us moves at an agonizingly slow pace, and very little happens throughout most of the film. Viewers are treated to scenes showcasing exciting events such as the characters eating dinner and discussing finances during the first two acts. The actual monster is barely even mentioned and only appears in the third act, which made its overall inclusion questionable. It really does seem as though The Monster Beneath Us was originally conceived as a Victorian costume drama that had a monster thrown in as an afterthought. If you aren’t a fan of slow-burning films, you probably won’t enjoy The Monster Beneath Us, as the relentlessly slow pace and the lack of interesting events depicted onscreen until the monster finally appears will no doubt turn you off.
This is a film which almost revels in the time it takes to seemingly build up to events which never happen. And despite apparently being a monster movie, the bodycount was incredibly low, and the level of blood was minimal. Without going into spoiler territory, the monster looked like something out of The Lord of the Rings, and you’ll wonder how something so large could have remained hidden in a basement for so long.
Despite its clearly limited budget, the costumes and set design looked convincing. The sprawling mansion looked suitably unwelcoming and foreboding, and one can only hope that it’ll serve as the filming location for a horror movie with a more focused script later on. The exterior shots of the mansion and the surrounding countryside also created a strong sense of loneliness and isolation, which certainly served the story the filmmakers were trying to tell. And since the cast was kept to a minimum, the feeling of isolation really was amplified by the limited amount of characters who we were introduced to.
At times, it seemed like The Monster Beneath Us was trying to be more of a psychological horror film than an actual monster movie. A significant amount of time was devoted to the impact that losing her husband and becoming a single parent has on Grace’s well-being. Similarly, Charles is shown to be a very lonely child with no friends, which explains why he wasn’t intrigued by the monster in the basement. These aspects could certainly have been explored further instead of being merely touched up, and the filmmakers seemed unsure of how to create tension around the psychological issues the characters were clearly experiencing.
Instead, the script largely focused on mundane aspects of the characters’ lives, with little happening in-between. Writer and director Sophie Osbourne, who previously helmed Pterodactyl and Summoning Bloody Mary 2, clearly wanted The Monster Beneath Us to take a while before reaching its conclusion, when a faster pace would have been preferable.
The script for The Monster Beneath Us certainly needed a great deal of polish, and it was hard to truly be invested when the plot seemed like it was going nowhere most of the time. The painfully slow pace also means that the attention of viewers will probably waver, before the monster finally does appear towards the end. Since there are countless other horror films set in English country houses, The Monster Beneath Us is ultimately difficult to recommend.
Summary
The Monster Beneath Us seems to be unsure if it wants to be a Victorian costume drama or a monster movie, and it ultimately fails to succeed at being either.
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