Passive Attack
By Dwayne Tillman
It’s a precarious thing, the high-concept film. Sometimes, like in the case of last year’s farting corpse extravaganza Swiss Army Man, the high-concept can have a pay off in truckloads – said film is one of the most original films to come around in years. Get it wrong, though, in the case of something like Snakes on a Plane (which is brilliant in title only) and the only thing you get remembered for is how much of a joke you’ve become. Colossal, the new film by Nacho Vigalondo, who is quickly making a name for himself as a frequently promising genre director, thankfully has more in common with the former than the latter. It’s both a refreshing take on the monster movie (it’s aeons more satisfying than last month’s dull Kong: Skull Island) as well as a thought-provoking and surprisingly endearing character study that ensures that this is a lot more than just “that Anne Hathaway monster movie.”
On the surface, yes, that is essentially what Colossal is. Hathaway plays Gloria, a dishevelled alcoholic who’s going through something of a not-quite mid-life crisis. She’s been unemployed for a year and she is kicked out of her boyfriend Tim’s (Dan Stevens, continuing his domination of 2017 alongside Legion and Beauty and the Beast) apartment thanks to her hard-partying habits. With nowhere else to go, she returns to her small hometown and reunites with her childhood friend, Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), who has never left town. They reconnect, Oscar gives her a waitress job at the bar he runs, and she slowly begins to get her life on track. But there’s trouble in the air. A giant kaiju monster has surfaced in Seoul, wreaking havoc. Wait, what? What does that have to do with one woman on the other side of the world? Well, this is where Colossal’s symphony of weird begins to take shape.
Hathaway is the best she has ever been here and is equally as impressive as she was in her (deserved) Oscar-winning role in Les Miserables. Her ability as such a natural performer is something that gets frequently overlooked, and she makes a flawed, shaggy character feel refreshingly real and relatable. We all know someone like this if it’s not us ourselves. The real surprise here, however, is Sudeikis, who brings a dramatic depth I never thought possible from him. Oscar is a bit of a shit, no doubt, and you can’t excuse his actions in the latter part of the film. But his character is given enough depth that he also feels real and never like a cartoonish caricature. It’s these well developed, ratty but endearing characters that elevate it higher than something like Swiss Army Man, which otherwise lacked a sense of relatability. Vigalondo smartly opts for a sympathetic approach, which makes the emotions feel well earnt.
The fascinating thing about Colossal and the thing that has stuck with me days after seeing isn’t its flashy monster moments (which may actually be the least interesting thing about the film). It’s the varied range of interpretations that you can take away from it. Is it a story about our fear of the unknown? The fear of facing ourselves? A parable about what we do to mask our problems? A subtly feminist tale with allusions to domestic violence? All of these ideas are presented throughout the film and are for the most part developed with depth and maturity, which means that the film never really feels like it is lacking identity or purpose. Vigalondo also balances his tone deftly, cohesively shifting from comedy, horror and drama without any jarring effect. Additionally, you can never predict where the film is heading. When’s the last time you saw a film you could say that about?
Despite its oddball concept, Colossal never feels like it is being quirky for the sake of being quirky. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, which I feel is slightly to its downfall. It never quite soars into weird brilliance like you want it to, most of the time keeping its monster action reserved for news snippets. It almost feels frustratingly safe, like it’s too scared to fully commit to its idea. A shame, because had it went further, it could have been an even more memorable experience. In addition, after such a promising first act, it loses a bit of focus in its middle section, as we abruptly jump around to different character motivations. Thankfully, it comes back swinging in its third act and mostly delivers on that first act promise.
For all of its flaws, we need more films like Colossal, whose very existence as a film in a marketplace full of regurgitated remakes is worth celebrating. Upon leaving my screening, every single person I walked past had a completely different take on the film. That’s something that’s very rare and difficult to do these days and something that I give a mountain of praise to Vigalondo for. Colossal isn’t exactly a colossal success, but a very good and very intriguing one that will give you a great deal to ponder over.