'Monitor' Review
- Kyle Wolfe
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Release Date: --/--/-- [TBA]
Genre: Horror.
MPAA: Not Rated.
The Verdict: A Must-See
Monitor arrives with a premise that feels immediately modern, carrying faint echoes of films like The Ring, while grounding its horror in a more immediate, psychological unease. Directed by Matt Black and Ryan Polly, the film expands on their earlier short with a clear understanding of how to translate that concept into a feature-length experience. Centered around a group of content moderators tasked with reviewing disturbing material, the film taps into a very real, very current anxiety surrounding digital spaces and the people forced to engage with them. It establishes its tone quickly—tense, invasive, and quietly unnerving—before gradually escalating into something more aggressive. There’s a confidence in how it builds that atmosphere, suggesting filmmakers who already have a strong sense of control behind the camera.
Where Monitor finds much of its effectiveness is in its execution of scares, particularly its use of jump scares. They’re undeniably well-timed and often genuinely effective, landing with a precision that shows a strong sense of audience rhythm. There is a point where the frequency begins to feel slightly repetitive, but the film does enough to vary the delivery to keep those moments from feeling completely stale. It plays with framing, sound design, and visual misdirection in ways that keep the viewer on edge, even when you start to anticipate the pattern. That balance between familiarity and execution allows the film to maintain momentum without fully losing its edge.
The concept does a lot of the heavy lifting, especially as it introduces the idea of a digital entity that begins to bleed beyond the confines of the screen. The film wisely avoids over-explaining what that presence is or where it comes from, allowing the horror to exist in a space that operates as both supernatural and psychologically rooted. That ambiguity ultimately works in its favor, creating a lingering unease that doesn’t rely on clear answers. It reinforces the idea that prolonged exposure to disturbing content doesn’t just desensitize—it can distort, linger, and feel impossible to fully escape.
The film largely rests on Brittany O’Grady, who delivers a performance that feels natural and true to the kind of work her character is tasked with. She captures the slow, cumulative toll of that environment in a way that never feels forced, letting the character’s unraveling emerge in subtle, believable ways. The script adds a more personal layer through her character’s strained relationship with her mother, giving the role added texture without overextending it. It’s not a showy or standout performance in the traditional sense, but it’s a necessary one—O’Grady keeps the film anchored, and it wouldn’t land nearly as effectively without her at the center of it.
As a debut feature, Monitor is a strong and confident first outing for Black and Polly, even if it doesn’t completely avoid some of the genre’s more familiar pitfalls. The repetition in its scare tactics slightly dulls its impact over time, but the strength of its core idea and its strongest moments carry it through. It’s a film that understands the mechanics of horror while tapping into something distinctly modern, using its digital backdrop to explore a different kind of fear—one that doesn’t necessarily stay contained. It may not fully refine every idea it introduces, but it leaves a clear impression and signals filmmakers with a solid grasp of how to build and sustain tension.
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