Monsterland is an American anthology horror television series created by Mary Laws and is based on the short story collection North American Lake Monsters: Stories by Nathan Ballingrud. It has a total of eight episodes and was premiered on October 2, 2020, on Hulu.
It has eight different stories set in different American cities where some humans are no less than monsters. The first episode follows a young woman Toni (Kaitlyn Dever) who lives with her girl, Jack (Charlotte Cabell) and soon a killer (Jonathan Tucker) knocks on her door, who has been on the news for some time and pays $100 to Toni for allowing him to stay at her home for that night.
The second episode stars Charlie Tahan as Nick in the main role, plays a secluded and lonely teen who is taking care of her ailing mother, the financial condition is weak, and has no money to buy medicines for his mother, and encounters a dark bizarre shadow in his house and later he gets to know that this shadow has been sighted in many different cities and killed many people. The third episode revolves around Annie (Nicole Beharie) and her husband Joe (Hamish Linklater) who is a doctor and has a dark past of abusing small children, sexually. The fourth episode is about Stan (Bill Camp) who owns an oil company and faces his nightmare after he and his company are incriminated for spilling oil in the seas and oceans, killing many animals and taking human lives. The Fifth episode is about two girls, Kate (Taylor Schilling) and Shawn (Roberta Colindrez), where Shawn wants to spend the rest of her life with Kate but Kate doesn't and tells that she's suffering from Bipolar, Type1. In the next episode, where Trieu Tran as Sharko develops a bond with a mermaid. The next is about two friends Laure (Kelly Marie Tran) and Elena (Sarah Catherine Hook), they both go to the famous white forest together and Elena goes missing. The next follows a couple Brian (Mike Colter) and Amy (Adepero Oduye), who just lost their child and live in a city where angels are falling from the sky.
The story and screenplay are hit for some episodes and miss for some episodes. I thought of this series having bulky monsters, but no, it's a character-driven series. What truly works is the characterization. The first episode introduces us to Tony, who is living a suffocating life with her daughter and the establishment of character Toni, is truly solid and real and Alex who is a killer, his scars and mysterious persona creates the creepy atmosphere effectively. It doesn't rely on some cheap jump scares and the story and the characters are so well defined that they suck you into their world from the initial frames only. Despite you are being introduced with new characters in every episode, it still watchable just because it's a unique approach to this genre. The story ends with an untidy conclusion which seems sometimes unsatisfactory or being ambiguous. It has a very slow pace that works sometime but was testing my patience frequently, obviously in those episodes which I didn't like, like the second episode that ends to give an immature kind of ending and the third episode which has many long scenes, the lead female actress roaming around in dark, was really annoying until she's attacked by that ghoul-like man.
Some of the performances are great and emerges as the best. Kaitlyn Dever as Toni (Booksmart, Unbelievable), Nicole Beharie as Annie (42, Sleepy Hollow), Taylor Schilling as Kate (Orange Is The New Black, The Luck One), Charlie Tahan as Nick (Ozark), Jonathan Tucker as Alex (Westworld), Kelly Marie Tran as Laurie (Rose Tico from Star Wars) are the performances that stand out from the rest.
So all in all, Monsterland, being an anthology, suffers for being confusing and giving an unsatisfactory ending at times, and delivers eight different stories that may or may not resonates and shows the darkest nature of humans that are no less than monsters. It was tough for me to sit through and complete all the eight episodes in one go, one might find that difficulty too and it's certainly not everyone's cup of tea.
Rating:- 3/5
Now streaming on Hulu.
 - Review : Humans are the Biggest monsters here!!!){kind=link}
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