It’s hardly Citizen Kane, but as feature debuts go Monsters is a pretty impressive feat by another multi-talented wunderkind: Gareth Edwards wrote the script, directed the film, was his own director of photography and did all the CGI on a computer in his bedroom, bringing the film in for cinematic peanuts. It certainly looks as if it cost a whole lot more, making the most of its Central American locations with some impressive cinematography and seamless, understated effects work. Looks, though, aren’t every-thing, and one of the film’s surprises is its refusal to rely on visual effects to tell its story; they are subtle, sparing and never used for their own sake. Likewise, the film isn’t over-directed, over-written or over-acted, achieving a kind of quiet naturalism not usually assoc-iated with the SF/horror genres.

The story is simple: after a NASA probe crash-lands in Central America with its cargo of extra-terrestrial samples, strange new life forms begin appearing. Six years later, a stretch of country – half of Mexico through to the US border – has been cordoned off as an ‘infected zone’ where the military try to contain the aliens. Cynical photojournalist Andrew Kaulder (Scott McNairy) and daddy’s little rich girl Sam (Whitney Able) are caught up in the chaos and must make their way through the infected zone to the safety of the US. It’s a journey that brings them together, and the film is as concerned with following their developing relat-ionship as with their dangerous journey through alien-infested jungles. It’s an updating of Capra’s It Happened One Night, with McNairy and Able reprising Gable’s reporter and Colbert’s spoiled heiress making their way across 1930s America. But, by replacing screwball comedy with an omnipresent sense of tentacled menace and forcing the film’s odd couple to imagine what the US looks like from the outside (it’s now separated from Mexico by a bloody great wall), Edwards produces a pleasantly surprising  generic mix that, while reminiscent of District 9’s political metaphors, harks back to the adventure movies of the past. The lack of gratuitous sex or violence means the kids can watch it too.