Monolith is another film focusing on a single protagonist who has to deal with something on their own. They have a series of phone calls and use a computer to get information. Films like Locke or Missing come to mind in this regard. This one though has a horror twist to it that the others I mentioned don’t have.

The Interviewer, as she’s referred to, played by Lily Sullivan (Evil Dead Rise) is a podcaster staying at her parents’ isolated home in Australia. She had not properly vetted a source on her last story so she got into hot water. She has protesters outside her place. Looking through her emails she notices that she has an email from a woman about a mysterious black brick.

She starts to go down the rabbit hole involving various women and men who have gotten one of the black bricks in question. Various things happen to these people including realistic dreams and other effects that make the bricks a strange mysterious item. One man collects them while others are trying to get rid of them. The gambit of what these bricks mean to each person who receives one of them is the main crux of the story. What do they mean? That is the main question.

The director Matthew Vesely uses something the viewer hardly sees as a device to create an ominous feel to the film. Not Getting the answers she is trying to get while recording her subjects for her sci-fi podcast Beyond Believability causes the interviewer paranoia. The further she goes down this rabbit hole the more she starts to doubt her thoughts and sanity.  That is the direction the story goes in.

Lily Sullivan is embroiled in quite a scary situation in Evil Dead Rise as she’s at odds with her sister who is passed by a Demon. Here the Evil is very subtly interspersed throughout the film. Moments of not feeding an innocent turtle or the house which was pristine and very clean at the beginning of the movie is dirty and ramshackle at the end. She forgets everything besides this story she’s investigating. That’s part of the horror the director is trying to show to the audience watching.

Two main things besides Sullivan that the director uses to forward the story are the people whom the main character calls and her inner monologue narrating her story. These two tricks of the trade get a lot of information out to those watching the film. Mother’s and German businessmen give stark accounts of the black bricks but not everyone she talks to is trustworthy.  That is part of what causes the paranoia for her.

Monolith is a very moody dramatic story. The single-character theme works very well for this story. Vesely the director creates an atmosphere that is very ominous and scary. Despite the movie taking place mostly in the daytime. The subtle nuances about the dirty house and turtle help show the state of things. Sullivan comes across as a very desperate woman trying to get answers but she ends up going into her whole world of paranoid behavior.  This is a solid film with a scary psychological story that kept me glued to the screen.

3 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen