[Mesnick]

Okay, I really debated for a long time whether I should write a review of this film. A film that none of you have seen, will not be able to see, and which is definitely not worth watching. However, this is my first kaiju movie, so I thought I'd share my impressions of it. So, "Monsters" 1993. Just in case, 18+.

Plot: The main character, Boris, played by Boris Shcherbakov, the Greatest Creation of the Gods... Now the confusion begins. This is a local meme. In general, the point is that Shcherbakov is an excellent actor with a well-deserved army of fans. But at the same time, in his filmography he has a bunch of very cheap and bad works, which these fans often cannot justify and therefore blindly admire everything that Shcherbakov creates there. “Monsters” is just such a case.

So, Boris is a photographer who specializes in erotic photography, but he is recruited for an expedition to the radioactive zone (obviously Chernobyl, but the name is never mentioned in the film). And, unlike most similar plots, Boris does not have a cool but tragic past. Employers simply liked his work. Well, this still makes some sense.

The members of the expedition: Boris, his love interest played by Ella Safari, who moans loudly in love scenes and more, a cool mustachioed special forces soldier, a scientist and cannon fodder. They come to the Zone, catch huge insects (real ones, because the film’s budget is limited), look at photographs of genetic mutations (also real and for the same reason), then Boris and a woman leave in a car for sex and a giant snake begins to interfere with them. But she can’t get inside, so the heroes get off with fright. After two of the extras, rats the size of dogs are eaten and it becomes known about animals grown due to radiation.

The scientist knows a way to make mutants non-aggressive, but he is killed by a cancer that climbs through the window. A full-scale invasion of monsters begins and the arriving military fights with them. In the chaos, the main characters try to survive and they succeed. In the end, they declare that the real monsters are people because it is because of them that mutants appeared.

Explanation: these are the works of Cinebridge studio, which filmed Shcherbakov with his wife and others in approximately the same roles in all of their films. They didn't even change the credits, they just didn't write the names of the characters. Their budget was so small that the window breaking was filmed with a swing and the sound of breaking glass. All the monsters in the film are real animals, superimposed over filmed landscapes or interacting with toys. Shots of military equipment are taken from other films, so they are never completely destroyed. Monsters and people never appear together in the frame; at most they only show dummies of tails and heads.
The main problem is that the animals behave like... animals in the frame. They scratch themselves, preen their feathers, sniff each other and show no signs of aggression. Yes, there are cool ideas, like a crow pecking at a helicopter or a turtle fighting a tank, but it was filmed with such a huge number of cuts that you can only be surprised, but not enjoy it. People also don’t pull out the plot, because the characters are flat and boring. As a result, the film was not even remembered as funny trash and is now practically forgotten.
Legacy: Still, Monsters has left its mark on popular culture. First of all: Sam Raimi stole Spider-Man's kiss from there. And don't you dare say otherwise:

Secondly: this film, by her own admission, inspired the singer Linda (Svetlana Gaiman) to create the song “Crow”. Which is almost as masterpiece as “Monsters” is mediocre:

Linda is the voice of music throughout the post-Soviet space in the 90s. And “Crow” is her best pitch. All 288 million people, thrown out of a huge country with an iron order and a clear goal, into a bunch of embittered smaller states, faced with a catastrophic increase in crime, racial intolerance and lack of money, felt like Linda’s crazy heroine, screaming “Na-na- on the!" against the backdrop of ruins and zombies. And the poetic allusions of the text, which perfectly describe the devastation reigning around and at the same time do not plunge one into despondency:
“They tick to the tact and the volcanoes sing,
Glasses don't break because they don't exist
Everyone died, I live like a crow!”
The most interesting thing is that the influence of “Monsters” is noticeable even in the video, which is doubly amazing. But I think I got too carried away and distracted, so I'm finishing. There is no conclusion, because I just wanted to share the film.