It's clear from the start that Landes is out to make a tragedy about innocence lost and the wickedness of political movements that rule by remote control with the capriciousness of Greek gods. He's succeeded brilliantly.

| Jun 25, 2020

There are allusions to William Golding's Lord of the Flies, but that fine novel, and Peter Brook's 1962 screen adaptation, though also elliptical, provided far more satisfying drama than Landes somewhat frustrating epic...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 26, 2020

There's something ... of Werner Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God in Colombian director Alejandro Landes's surreal, wildly beautiful third feature.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 8, 2019

Narrative details of Monos are opaque; instead, the film focuses on the shifting power dynamics of this adolescent group, playing out like a fusion of Lord of the Flies and Apocalypse Now.

| Oct 31, 2019

The performances from the young cast are vivid and utterly credible, yet the conspicuously metaphorical nature of the context eventually becomes wearisome.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 28, 2019

Monos is gorgeous, but it is also lucid as hell. And it all happens at lightning speed.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 28, 2019

It is alternately sensuous and scary, thrilling and appalling, with a dark heart of horror at its core.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 27, 2019

Monos is one of the year's most extraordinary films. Its feverish visuals rupture any sense of surface realism, creating a disarming, almost surrealist universe where anarchy takes hold.

| Oct 24, 2019

Monos, in its surreal power and persuasiveness, deserves to be called a sci-fi epic of the here and the now.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 23, 2019

Monos is bound to be a fixture on many critics' Top 10 films of 2019 lists.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 23, 2019

Muscular filmmaking. Physically shaken, in a good way.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 22, 2019

If it's a hard film to like, Monos is ridiculously impressive filmmaking, savage and surreal, immediate but timeless. If Hollywood wanted to do a darker, grittier take on The Goonies, Landes is their man.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 21, 2019

[A] gorgeously shot, haunting look at human nature at its fraying edges.

| Original Score: B | Oct 4, 2019

An experience at once jagged and lyrical, brutal and beautiful, angry and abstract, scattered and wholly singular.

| Sep 28, 2019

It's an intoxicating descent into anarchy that alarmingly suggests the bonds of civility are all too easy to shuck off.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 26, 2019

Monos sinks you into its mud until the dirt stuffs your mouth. You won't be able to breathe - but you'll be thanking Landes for the cinematic suffocation all the same.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 26, 2019

A pure cinematic experience like Monos is a rare and precious gem. Colombian director [Alejandro] Landes has created a surreal, sumptuous assault on the senses that's as lushly beautiful as it is unforgettable.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 26, 2019

Violent, beautiful and powerfully watchable...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 18, 2019

Call it a collective character study or a perpetual-war film - Monos takes it cues from a number of well-known influences. But there's a specific, singular madness that's completely its own.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 16, 2019

It is absolutely gorgeous... You can feel the mud and feel like you can reach out and touch the clouds.

| Sep 16, 2019