Monster (2003) Review

Monster’s director Patty Jenkins has taken a huge risk. To make a semi fictional film about a real-life figure like Aileen Wuornos – who not only has received acres of tabloid attention but is the subject of two Nick Broomfield documentaries – challenges an audiences preconceptions and expectations.

However thanks to intelligent scripting and direction that never slips into exploitation and a central performance that captivates the audience from the first scene, her gamble has produced a must-see movie.

Aileen Wuornos started life as an abused child, turned to prostitution and, when she started to kill the men who paid her for sex, became famous as America’s first female serial killer. Monster tells her story, focusing primarily on her relationship with Selby Wall, a young woman sent to live with her aunt to ‘cure’ her homosexuality. As their story unfolds we see it is this relationship that both saves Aileen’s life and damns it forever.

Jenkins created a fictional drama from events in Wuornos’s life, press coverage and privileged access to a collection of hundreds of private letters, weaving a compelling narrative that is fundamentally a tragic love story. The camera neither judges nor preaches in depicting Wuornos horrendous actions which begin when she kills in self defence and continue as she discovers not only a talent for but also a growing monetary need to murder.

Like the protagonists in Thelma and Louise, Aileen is empowered through ‘masculine’ behaviour – adopting and cherishing her role as Selby’s protector and provider. However as her murders become more frequent and brutal our sympathies shift decidedly toward the victims.

What makes this difficult film work is its central performances. As Selby, Christina Ricci moves seamlessly between the innocent and gauche and the manipulative and selfish – and all within a wholly realistic portrayal.

But it is Charlize Theron who steals the show; hidden under make up, weight and prosthetics, she entirely wipes away memories of her previous glamorous throwaway roles. It is not merely the visual transformation though; she literally inhabits the role, commanding our attention.

Theron’s Wuornos is a woman out of control of her own body: nervy and awkward one minute, cocky and violent the next. Full of fascinating movement, she brings a truth to the role that makes you sympathise with her, no matter what.

Monster is not a happy or a light film (though it has moments of comedy), and at times it is an ordeal to watch. Yet it is worth watching every second of it – if only for Theron’s awesome performance; a performance that earned one of the most deserved Oscars of recent times.

MONSTER comes out on LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY from Second Sight on 15 August 2022

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