Monos
Neon | Release Date: September 13, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
78
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 27 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeNov 5, 2019
Tonally, the film is mercurial, capturing the multiple realities of its young subjects who are both children and soldiers – the distressing, disorienting dichotomy at the centre of its eerie spell. With skill and sensitivity, Landes manages to capture both sides of their fractured world, evoking empathy without resort to pity. Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovSep 25, 2019
A pure cinematic experience like Monos is a rare and precious gem. Colombian director Landes has created a surreal, sumptuous assault on the senses that’s as lushly beautiful as it is unforgettable. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesCarlos AguilarSep 12, 2019
A towering filmic achievement, Monos pulsates like an inescapable vivid trance, cosmic and terrestrial at once, fantastical and violently stark, about victims and victimizers. Like all dualities, those in this excursion are two bends that belong to the same river. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawFeb 13, 2019
An arrestingly bizarre experience. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Sep 10, 2019
Monos isn’t a social-issue tract, or just a lament for the beasts of no nation. It’s a fever dream of a war drama, caught halfway between realism and the hallucinatory intensity of an ancient fairy tale. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnFeb 1, 2019
Aided by “Under the Skin” composer Micah Levi’s thunderous score, Landes delivers a suspenseful encapsulation of alienated youth enmeshed in pointless battles that can only lead to further destruction. Read full review
91
The PlaylistJoe BlessingFeb 1, 2019
Though Monos feels very contemporary aesthetically, its subjects are timeless: the malleability of group dynamics and how subtle changes can lead to either violence or harmony. It’s a philosophical film with very few words, examining its ideas through powerful images and feelings. Read full review
90
Screen DailyTim GriersonFeb 1, 2019
This is a gripping, sometimes hypnotising film in which notions of good and evil are less clear-cut than the urgent desire to stay alive. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 25, 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. Read full review
83
Original-CinJim SlotekOct 1, 2019
Monos is an immersive, sweaty, almost hallucinatory experience of hormone-driven anarchy. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerOct 21, 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. Read full review
80
VarietyJessica KiangSep 29, 2019
A sublimely crafted saga about child soldiers discovering their own hearts of darkness in an unnamed, untamed Latin American wilderness, Monos presents an ugly reality in terms so profoundly paradoxical it becomes surreality: an experience at once jagged and lyrical, brutal and beautiful, angry and abstract, scattered and wholly singular. Read full review
80
We Got This CoveredLuke ParkerSep 27, 2019
Elegant and entrapping, muddy and magnificent, Monos is a thrilling, if ambiguous endeavor of guerilla warfare, human nature, and adolescent anarchy. Read full review
80
Rolling StoneDavid FearSep 17, 2019
There’s a specific, singular madness that this movie conjures up that’s completely its own, a spell it casts that goes way beyond homages or spot-the-reference pastiches. Read full review
80
The New YorkerAnthony LaneSep 16, 2019
What Landes has done is to revise, and to render yet starker, the premise of “Lord of the Flies.” Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfSep 3, 2019
Kids train for guerrilla fighting in a gorgeously atmospheric film that feels like a transmission from the future. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 13, 2019
There’s a bicep-flexing quality to Landes’s direction, with its bursts of colour and chaos, its conjuration of a surreal experience out of tactile reality. You tumble out of it bruised, bewildered, mesmerised. Read full review
80
CineVueRory O’ConnorFeb 13, 2019
Nothing short of an aesthete’s dream, a film crammed with visual bravado that at various times echoes Kubrick, Malick, and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneCarlos AguilarSep 19, 2019
A dreadlocks-wearing Moises Arias renders a career-best work, and his first in a Spanish-language feature, in the soiled shoes of Bigfoot, who appoints himself dictator when the chance arises to go rogue in the jungle. The Colombian American actor nails the demanding part procuring the larger-than-life persona of a deranged leader confident beyond his size: a toned Napoleon in briefs and black paint. Read full review
75
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanSep 18, 2019
The violent, beautiful and powerfully watchable movie Monos — Spanish for monkeys — takes its title from the code name used by a group of teenage guerrillas. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleySep 13, 2019
A fascinating and sometimes frustrating film. Read full review
70
The AtlanticDavid SimsSep 26, 2019
Monos is an undeniable wonder, but one that enchants the most when its head is in the clouds. Read full review
67
The Film StageJordan RaupFeb 1, 2019
The viscerality will surely leave one shaken, though they may question if the unceasing sadistic acts on display are worth the experience. Read full review
60
TheWrapMonica CastilloSep 12, 2019
This is a movie I’ve grown to admire more than I enjoy. Landes’ and Wolf’s imagery is stunning to watch at even if his script with Dos Santos leaves off much of the text. Read full review
50
The New York TimesGlenn KennySep 12, 2019
It’s frustrating to see such a sophisticated cinematic apparatus used in the service of such muddled half-ideas. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineChristopher GraySep 9, 2019
Alejandro Landes’s film depicts amorality with minimal curiosity and a surplus of numbing stylistic verve. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterKeith UhlichFeb 1, 2019
Even in this fictional context, the line between portraying and exploiting abused innocence gets uncomfortably, offensively blurred. Read full review
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