Review: Monolith

 Monolith (2024)

Director: Matt Vesely

Writer: Lucy Campbell

Stars: Lily Sullivan, Ling Cooper, TangAnsuya Nathan

How to Watch: VOD

Synopsis: A headstrong journalist whose investigative podcast uncovers a strange artifact, an alien conspiracy, and the lies at the heart of her own story.

Thoughts: Lily Sullivan carries this monolithic Australian sci-fi thriller on her lone shoulders as a one-woman show. You may remember her from last year's Evil Dead: Rise as the badass sister, Beth, who battles the dead and saves who she can. Her role here is the complete opposite of the horror movie action hero she portrayed then, but it's no less compelling, as almost the entire movie is just her velvety, slightly gravely voice and close-ups of her talking into a microphone. Trust me, it's riveting. It's a podcast movie about an other-worldly black brick that shows up in people's lives and impacts them in various ways. Our main character is interviewing people who have had these bricks, and trying to unravel the mystery behind them for her new podcast job, Beyond Believable. 

Director Matt Vesely shoots the entire film in sort of a crisp achromatic gloom that matches the misty countryside that the clean-lined sprawling estate is surrounded by. The whole film feels like some ASMR experiment that tickles not only your ears, but your eyes as well. 

The movie creates many paths that it never actually goes down. It touches on government conspiracies, aliens, word-of-mouth illnesses, pandemics creating global mental illness, and more. You could say that the movie doesn't have focus but I saw it more that when you're investigating a mystery, you're going to have a lot of wild theories until it all unravels into that one truth. 

I'm not going to lie, as the third act begins its climb into the climatic ending, I kind of lost the thread a bit. The ending is something to behold and while there is no clear mapping of how we got there, it's a delight to theorize about. Is it an allegory for secrets? Lies? Mental Illness? Or is it all just aliens? I think it's up to us to decide what that black brick means, I've drawn my own conclusions. Give it a watch and tell me yours.   

3 out of 5 💀s