Jean Jentilet
Monolith opens with a single enticing line spoken over a black screen, “I want to tell you a story.” Over the next moments, a narrative unfolds into lunacy. The screen pulls back to an extreme close-up of a microphone, then to a home office, in the same space where viewers will spend all but a few moments of the movie, and with the same character, The Interviewer (Lily Sullivan), who viewers will share the space for the duration. This opening moment is a nearly perfect capsule of the entire film.
The Interviewer, we learn shortly after she ends the opening call with an apparent conspiracy theorist, is a disgraced journalist embarking on a new career working on Beyond Believable, a podcast about unexplained phenomena. Her studio, for the time being, is in her parents’ home while they are on vacation. At a loss for a topic for her first episode, she receives a cryptic email from an unknown sender, about a woman, Floramae King (Ling Cooper Tang), and “the brick.” A skeptic—as is made clear by her mocking of the podcast’s potential audience—The Interviewer is a journalist first and goes straight to investigating the email. Her doubt remains even after speaking with Floramae, who tells a story of being fired and shunned by a wealthy family. Floramae used to housekeep for them, but after they accused her young daughter of trashing thousands of dollars worth of furniture, she was let go. This unfortunate turn of events occurred after a mysterious black brick showed up at Floramae’s home. How the brick showed up remains unclear. One day, it was simply there. When the family fired Floramae, they took the brick and sold it to a shady art dealer in an attempt to recoup their losses from the destruction of their furniture. It is after The Interviewer tracks down and speaks with the art dealer that Monolith takes off.
We learn, of course, that the brick is not a lone brick, but one of many. In addition to giving off a sense of doom and alienness, the bricks dredge up deeply buried guilt, fear, and anxiety for anyone finding themselves in possession of one. The only time the movie leaves The Interviewer’s presence is when listeners call in to share their stories of the visions they have suffered since the brick came into their lives. None of them seem to know where the brick came from, or what it really is, and no matter how bad their brick’s invocations make them feel, they do not part with their bricks…with one exception.
Monolith excels at embedding The Interviewer’s isolation and escalating obsession into the viewer’s experience, not just by limiting the setting—The Interviewer never leaves the patio, and even has her food delivered—but by the setting itself. It’s a singular house with big windows and expansive views of unpeopled vistas only emphasize how alone The Interviewer is. This is enhanced by the choice to give us other characters only as voices over the phone, occasional still shots, and bodies from the neck down in one short video clip. We are very much inside The Interviewer’s mind, which pays off well when the final revelation comes.
The film’s pacing is also masterful, which could be described as deliberate rather than slow, efficiently languid, almost. The action escalates logically. Each scene, while subtly drawn out to ratchet up the tension, also develops The Interviewer and moves the story along. There is no lingering for the sole purpose of seeing how long the viewer’s opinion of their own patience can be tested.
While there are a few moments having to do with the inciting incident that feels forced, overall Monolith is an interesting, darkly atmospheric, and unsettling take on the viral madness concept.
Monolith is available on Blu-ray.
