Notable Cast: Lily Sullivan
There are ways to balance a budget for a film. Limited
locations, limited characters, limited visuals. All of these are valid ways of
telling a story as long as the creativity in its narrative can carry the weight
of the film. Yet, it’s shocking how far Monolith takes it. One star. One
location. And that’s essentially it. It’s about as minimalist as possible
before someone starts filming in the void. And since it’s about a podcaster,
one might argue that it does occur in the void.
Still, as Monolith unfolds, it's strangely hypnotic
following a journalist's investigation, played by Lily Sullivan, about
mysterious black “bricks” that have been arriving at various people’s homes.
Slowly (very, very slowly) but surely, the narrative adds subtle layers to its
mystery. It’s a film that asks many questions, rarely provides answers, and
loves manipulating the information provided to its audience through the
questions the main character asks—or doesn’t ask.
Monolith is told through the perspective of
Sullivan’s journalist, who has taken a gig delivering conspiracy-focused
podcast episodes after she loses her journalism position in the wake of a
scandal surrounding one of her articles. Sullivan aptly anchors the film,
providing another emotional and mounding performance after last year's horror
thrill ride, Evil Dead Rise. She pulls off one of the most daunting
tasks for an actor, providing most of the dialogue into a headset via phone
calls. She only acts against one other live person in the film at the very end,
and she ends up pulling that off horrifyingly. This is Sullivan’s show, and she
handles it with absolute grace and delivers all the nuance and layers when
necessary to imbue the narrative with the emotional resonance that it
needs.
The rest of the narrative is about the slow burn, long-take
visual embrace of stillness, and the building unease of quiet. For a film that
certainly feels like it's channeling the disturbing memories of the pandemic, Monolith
manages never to feel like it's stalling. Instead, director Matt Vesely
maintains this sense of pending disaster. Through the way that its lead
character conducts interviews with various people and their building sense
of unease around the titular ‘black bricks’ they encounter or the long takes of
the suffocatingly empty house that Sullivan is working in, the film maintains a
sense of impending dread that saturates its limited dialogue. If anything, it
brings to mind some of the early work of Oz Perkins (notably his haunted
house flick I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House), and that’s a
massive compliment in terms of how Monolith handles its tonality.
Monolith may not be a film for antsy film viewers.
It’s meticulous, pondering its own mysteries and delving into the psychology
(and psychosis?) of Sullivan’s character. In its own way, it feels like a film
adaption of a radio play - smartly updated with modern elements like podcasts,
the role of journalism, and a post-pandemic tonality. The film asks far more
questions than it answers and for those willing to settle into its rhythm, Monolith
is one of the year's most fascinating and impressive films.
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