Monster (2023)
There's a moment, fairly early in Monster, where you're absolutely certain you know what kind of film you're watching. You know who the villain is. You know the shape of the injustice. You are, in short, wrong. And the pleasure of Hirokazu Kore-eda's film is watching it dismantle your certainty, piece by piece, until you're left with something that feels far more honest and far more devastating than the story you thought you'd signed up for.
I went in expecting the kind of quiet, observational family drama Kore-eda does so well. What I got instead was a tightly wound mystery structured a bit like Rashomon, the same events replayed through different eyes, each perspective reshuffling the deck entirely. It's a structural trick that could feel gimmicky in lesser hands, but here it's the whole point. The film is genuinely about the limits of what any one of us can see from where we're standing.
The first act reminded me strongly of Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt with Mads Mikkelsen, that excruciating, almost unbearable experience of watching someone accused of something terrible while the community closes in around them. The sense of dread is the same. The righteous fury is the same. But Monster keeps pulling the rug, keeps asking you to reconsider, and by the time the final act arrives it has quietly transformed into something else altogether. Something far gentler and far more heartbreaking.
To pull that kind of structural trick off, you need a cast that can make every version of events feel completely real, and the performances here are just extraordinary. Sakura Ando, who I thought was brilliant in Shoplifters, is a genuine powerhouse as the mother at the centre of it all. There's a raw, frantic energy to her performance that makes every scene she's in feel desperately high-stakes. She's not playing a symbol or a device, she's playing a specific woman in a specific nightmare, and you feel every second of it.
The child actors are equally remarkable. Natural, unforced, never once tipping into the kind of performance that reminds you you're watching a performance. That's harder than it sounds, especially when the material asks so much of them emotionally. The film earns every bit of the tension it wrings from their scenes together.
But if I'm being honest, the thing that pushes Monster from very good into genuinely great is the score. This was Ryuichi Sakamoto's final work before his death, and knowing that adds an almost unbearable poignancy to what's already an incredibly moving film. The music doesn't underline the emotion or tell you how to feel, it breathes alongside the story, adding a layer of melancholy and beauty that you carry with you long after the film has finished. It's a fitting farewell from one of the great composers, and it belongs entirely to this film.
What Kore-eda has made here is a film about perception and blind spots, about how thoroughly we can misread a situation and a person when we only have our own vantage point to go on. It's told with patience and a genuine tenderness for all of its characters, even the ones who behave badly, even the ones who get things catastrophically wrong. Nobody is a monster in the way you first suspect. That's both the revelation and the tragedy.
Four stars. A gripping, beautifully made puzzle of a film that breaks your heart in the best possible way, and then stays with you for days.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2023 | Watched: 2026-06-12
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: MUBI · MUBI Amazon Channel
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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