Monos

Monos is a modern twist on the Lord of the Flies story, while also recalling the surreal jungle insanity of Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972).

Set in an unknown Latin American jungle, a group of teenage guerrillas are training for a war that seems to be happening somewhere beyond the Andean mountain camp where they are based above the clouds while waiting for orders.

It’s a classic tale of how children from different social backgrounds, unsupervised and isolated from civilization left to their own devices armed with deadly weapons, will bring out their most violent instincts.

Playing soldier, the young commandos, addressed by their war names like Rambo, Lobo, Smurf, Dog and Bigfoot, are tasked with holding an American female doctor hostage (Julianne Nicholson). As rivalries grow, and opinions differ, shifting alliances form into separate camps that eventually threaten to tear apart the fragile order of the wild cult of kids with deadly results.

What makes Monos so intriguing and powerful is its unflinching and unnerving look at how a cadre of child soldiers, wielding automatic weapons, steadily degenerate from free spirited self-discovery, to baser warlike instincts and survival in the lower depths of the jungle.

The original music, a mix of drums, whistles and synthesizers, by Mica Levi contributes to the dark dense eerie atmosphere and feeling of primeval beauty and terrifying horror. With echoes of the hellish tribal chaos of Apocalypse Now (1979), Monos is a bold unpredictable film with an impressive ensemble cast of young unknown actors.

They are referred to as Monos, meaning monkeys, which is exactly what they appear to be devolving into as they savagely lose their innocence, regressing to a state of anarchy and eventually forced to individually fall away from the group to find their own way out of the jungle.

As the film builds to a gripping climax, we are left with the wild forces of nature consuming any sense of humanity. The visuals become darker, hallucinogenic and confused. A small breakaway group of aggressive fanatical “monos” enter into another world, another reality, absorbed by the heart of darkness.

Visually stunning, Monos was beautifully filmed by cinematographer Jasper Wolf on remote locations in Colombia’s Andean mountains and dense jungle rivers that were mostly untouched by humans.

Director Alejandro Landes in only his second fiction feature, brings us a mesmerizing nightmarish vision; an unforgettable experience with fully realized characters, and makes it relevant for our modern times with all its metaphorical elements in tack. He is an important new voice in Colombian cinema.

An International co-production between eight countries, Monos has won multiple international awards including the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury prize at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and was selected as Colombia’s official Oscar submission for the Best International Feature Film.

JP