Teenage commandos perform military training exercises by day and indulge in youthful hedonism by night, an unconventional family bound together under a shadowy force know only as The Organization. After an ambush drives the squadron into the jungle, both the mission and the intricate bonds between the group begin to disintegrate.... (Full plot summary below)
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Teenage commandos perform military training exercises by day and indulge in youthful hedonism by night, an unconventional family bound together under a shadowy force know only as The Organization. After an ambush drives the squadron into the jungle, both the mission and the intricate bonds between the group begin to disintegrate.
Leave your thoughts about Monos.
| Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovA pure cinematic experience like Monos is a rare and precious gem. Colombian director Landes has created a surreal, sumptuous assault on the senses that’s as lushly beautiful as it is unforgettable. |
| The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeTonally, the film is mercurial, capturing the multiple realities of its young subjects who are both children and soldiers – the distressing, disorienting dichotomy at the centre of its eerie spell. With skill and sensitivity, Landes manages to capture both sides of their fractured world, evoking empathy without resort to pity. |
| Los Angeles TimesCarlos AguilarA dreadlocks-wearing Moises Arias renders a career-best work, and his first in a Spanish-language feature, in the soiled shoes of Bigfoot, who appoints himself dictator when the chance arises to go rogue in the jungle. The Colombian American actor nails the demanding part procuring the larger-than-life persona of a deranged leader confident beyond his size: a toned Napoleon in briefs and black paint. |
| IndieWireEric KohnAided by “Under the Skin” composer Micah Levi’s thunderous score, Landes delivers a suspenseful encapsulation of alienated youth enmeshed in pointless battles that can only lead to further destruction. |
| The A.V. ClubA.A. DowdMonos isn’t a social-issue tract, or just a lament for the beasts of no nation. It’s a fever dream of a war drama, caught halfway between realism and the hallucinatory intensity of an ancient fairy tale. |
| The PlaylistJoe BlessingThough Monos feels very contemporary aesthetically, its subjects are timeless: the malleability of group dynamics and how subtle changes can lead to either violence or harmony. It’s a philosophical film with very few words, examining its ideas through powerful images and feelings. |
| Screen DailyTim GriersonThis is a gripping, sometimes hypnotising film in which notions of good and evil are less clear-cut than the urgent desire to stay alive. |
| The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzMonos sinks you into its mud until the dirt stuffs your mouth. You won’t be able to breathe – but you’ll be thanking Landes for the cinematic suffocation all the same. |
| EmpireIan FreerIf it’s a hard film to like, Monos is ridiculously impressive filmmaking, savage and surreal, immediate but timeless. If Hollywood wanted to do a darker, grittier take on The Goonies, Landes is their man. |
| VarietyJessica KiangA sublimely crafted saga about child soldiers discovering their own hearts of darkness in an unnamed, untamed Latin American wilderness, Monos presents an ugly reality in terms so profoundly paradoxical it becomes surreality: an experience at once jagged and lyrical, brutal and beautiful, angry and abstract, scattered and wholly singular. |
