Sometimes you go to a movie in an empty theater and it’s because nobody else is as cool as you, like when I dragged my sister to Furiosa with me. But sometimes you go to a movie in an empty theater because the movie, is in fact, bad. Monster Summer is the second kind.
I went to this because I had no idea what it was. Neither did the ticket girl or popcorn boy. Wikipedia was less than helpful and I do love a coin toss. I’ll do my best to explain what the hell was even going on here.
What even is this movie?: A witch is stealing the souls of tweens on Martha’s Vineyard, and it’s up to Noah, a wannabe journalist, and the rest of his little league baseball team to save the day. They enlist ex-cop Mel Gibson, almost kill an old lady, and battle an evil baseball umpire before all was said and done.
The Mel Gibson of it all: Look I didn’t know til the opening credits rolled. Sometimes a movie has a bad person in it. It happens. It’s fine.
It’s impossible to break this movie down into good and bad. Instead, here is a list of the most baffling things in Monster Summer:
1: Mel Copson’s tragic backstory is that his 5 year old son was kidnapped by a mysterious motorcyclist. This exists solely to establish that Mel Copson ‘understands monsters.’ It never comes up again except to explain 1: why he is good at making murder boards involving missing kids and 2: his divorce. Which the plucky tween protag is Very Concerned about for some reason.
2: They do an admittedly fairly clever fakeout where the plucky tweens tackle a harmless old lady claiming she’s a witch. This is to misdirect us from the fact that the witch is, in fact, the mean little league baseball umpire. Was this written because of somebody’s decades old beef with an umpire, somewhere? Sure seems like it at parts!
3: They do, in fact, find a broomstick at a crime scene.
4: The movie is very concerned about ‘creeps’ having access to children but does not, for some reason, apply this to the head plucky tween who is heavily implied to be crashing with Mel Copson, a truly grizzled old man who half the town thinks murdered his family. That’s Fine and Wholesome, for some reason.
5: Mel Copson does, in fact, steal silver bullets from a different 12 year old boy, who happens to be in a witch induced trance state, that he’s left in a room alone with.
6: The evil baseball umpire does transform into a female? Feminine? Witch at some point and if the movie was more coherent I’d call it transmisogynist but mostly it just feels like they changed who the witch was with three days of filming left.
7: They shoot the witch with silver bullets, and she turns to dust and everybody gets their souls back EXCEPT the best friend, who doesn’t get his soul back until he needs it to win a baseball game.
8: One of the supporting plucky tweens is obsessed with JFK for some reason?
9: This was directed by David Henrie, who you all will know as the hot brother from Wizards of Waverly Place. Or you won’t, in which case move along and don’t think too hard about what I just said.
Should you go see this: Yes. Yes absolutely. It’s bad in the funniest way possible. Go with a friend, or a group, or on a date. Or alone, hopefully you’ll find someone in on the joke.
What am I inspired to write now?: Legal thriller where a bunch of kids on bikes adventure kids accidentally kill somebody thinking they were a supernatural creature and/or alien. Flashbacks interspersed with current court transcripts, documents, jailhouse letters, etc. Supernatural status of victim left deliberately ambiguous.
In conclusion: Please go see this and report back. Maybe we can make it an accidental cult classic. Like The Room.
Singing off,
Marlowe
Marlowe Writes 