Check out the teaser for Monsters: Dark Continent, sequel to the Gareth Edwards film

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Gareth Edwards impressed enough with his 2010 film MONSTERS that he landed the coveted job of directing next summer’s GODZILLA for Legendary Pictures. MONSTERS was popular enough that a sequel was greenlit without Edwards at the help. Tom Green (not that Tom Green) was brought in to direct the movie known as MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT. Now we have a brief teaser for the film that looks to be right in line with the visual style and tone of the original.

MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT stretches the idea of what a sequel is in that it shares nothing with the first film aside from existing in the same universe. In fact, MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT shifts the setting of the film to the Middle East, the titular dark continent. For those who are fans of the original film, you know the monsters are aliens and only seen in quick shots. The crux of the story focuses more on the characters who populate this overrun world.

MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT director Tom Green had this to say about the sequel:

As soon as I watched MONSTERS I completely identified with the idea of using real locations as a foundation on which to build a world of limitless scale. From my first visit to the location shown [in the teaser], in Jordan, it was somewhere I felt was key to making Dark Continent work. The moonscape-like environment was the perfect basis for an ‘alien’ landscape. The quarry trucks you see here became ‘buggies’ to transport the remains of firebombed monster herds to be incinerated, with all the leading characters emerging from the dust to witness the scale of the death toll for the first time — and for one character maybe too many times…”

MONSTERS is definitely a franchise starter for intelligent horror/scifi that has a ton of promise. I like that DARK CONTINENT will stand alone from the first film and that any potential follow-ups could as well. Too often, films get bogged down in outdoing their predecessor; MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT may be the case of continuing a quality story without overextending it’s boundaries.

MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT hits theaters in 2014.