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Bob Hoose
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Movie Review

It’s the summer of 1997, and Martha’s Vineyard is once again filling with vacationers. As always, people are streaming onto the Massachusetts island for fun and frolicking relaxation on the sandy beachfronts.

Of course, some people live there year-round. They watch the wealthy and über-wealthy blow in for the season, but they just keep their distance and live their typical small-town lives.

Noah is one such kid. He and his friends ride around on their bikes, play ball and get into typical small-town trouble. They generally couldn’t care less about the moneyed tourists and wealthy famous people.

However, Noah has his eye on a couple of people. And that’s mostly due to his desire to be a reporter someday like his deceased dad used to be. So he’s always looking for a good story.

This year, a strange, isolated loner named Carruthers has popped up on Noah’s radar. Rumors say that this guy is, maybe, a murderer. Yeah, they say his family disappeared back in ’65. And he’s probably buried their bodies somewhere on his property. So Noah will keep his eyes peeled.

Another person Noah’s watching this summer is a strange old lady who moved into his single mom’s boarding house. She dresses all in black and rides around the town on a bike—always watching kids. And as Noah watches her, he can’t help but think there could be something a bit creepy going on.

Then something a bit creepy happens.

Noah’s best friend Ben was swimming at night out by the pier and something went wrong. When they pulled him out of the water, Ben was left with a blank stare. It was almost like he didn’t even recognize Noah anymore, like he was some kind of … zombie version of Noah’s bestie.

The local police said it was because Ben was caught in an undertow. It was sorta like PTSD, they said. The girl Ben was with had a different story, though. She said there was a witch cackling on the pier. That’s right, a witch! And then this thing jumped in the water and pulled Ben under. It tugged at her, too.

That may sound crazy. But some of the best stories start out sounding crazy. And Noah has a reporter’s blood flowing through his veins. He’ll investigate and find out what really happened.

And right now, Noah’s got this gut instinct that everything he’s been watching lately … might be linked!


Positive Elements

[Note: Spoilers are contained in this section.]

Mr. Carruthers turns out not to be a murderer, but a former cop whose family fell apart after someone kidnapped his son. This retired detective definitely doesn’t believe in Noah’s local witch theories. But after he and Noah meet, he starts to believe that maybe something bad is going on. Carruthers agrees to at least look into things after Noah comes to him for help.

Carruthers and Noah eventually begin to share their sad stories about the people they’ve lost in their lives (Noah’s dad, Carruthers’ son), and they come to understand each other’s grief. Carruthers ends up putting his life on the line for Noah and some other kids. In fact, thanks to the efforts of Carruthers, Noah and Noah’s friends, Sammy and Eugene, a large number of young kids’ lives are restored to normal.

Noah’s mom is concerned about Noah getting in trouble over his “investigations.” But eventually she decides to stop fighting her son’s passion to be like his dad and she gives the boy a box full of his father’s research and articles. She shares her love for them both. Noah replies in kind.

Spiritual Elements

When Noah tells Carruthers about his witch theory, Carruthers balks at the idea, saying, “I believe in real monsters.” But in time and with a gradual accumulation of further evidence, the ex-cop starts to become a believer. In fact, he starts to link kids like Ben (and some other victims that appear in town) to cases involving kids all around the state.

Eventually we do see some magical/spiritual happenings in the form of someone magically transforming into different male and female forms.

A magical force types a message out on Noah’s typewriter and causes lightbulbs to blow up. Scores of kids regain a spiritual energy that was stolen away from them.

Sexual & Romantic Content

At a campfire gathering of teenagers, a pretty girl looks at a nearby guy with a seductive smile. Then she leads him into the woods. As the girl caresses the eager dude’s back, we see her hand momentarily turn gnarled and green.

When Noah gives a story to the editor of the local paper, the editor rejects it as being more of a “peeping Tom” story than the local interest article that he was looking for.

When Ben and a local teen girl go out to swim by the pier, at first it appears as if they’re stripping off their clothes to swim in their underwear. (But then it becomes clear that they had swimsuits on under their clothes.)

Violent Content

Monster Summer begins with a young teen smashing his way out through a house window. He scrambles up from his fall, dropping a gun. And as he runs off, a gnarled, witch-like character picks up a shattered piece of glass with a smear of the boy’s blood on it and licks the shard clean.

That, frankly, is the bloodiest scene in this film. From there on, any truly violent moments are either talked about, verbally threatened, or kept offscreen.

One scene, for instance, features a teen boy and girl who accidentally walk off into a quarantined field holding unexploded WWII ordinances. Offscreen, we hear an explosion. Later we see a crater in the ground and hear that the boy died. (The unknown teen girl did not. But it’s implied that the girl was a transformed witch that was subsequently scarred.)

In another scene, the adult witch figure is shot repeatedly with silver bullets. (It’s stated that all monsters can be wounded by a silver bullet.) As the bullets hit her, small floating balls of light stream out of her torso, representing the spiritual energy stolen from children. Eventually, the struggling witch falls and expires.

That said, we never actually see the above-mentioned energy being siphoned away from those children. Instead, those soul-sapping encounters are implied or suggested. We see someone driving around in an old car and approaching children on the road during the day and at night, for instance. We’re told that witches feed on a child’s spiritual energy and the kids and teens are either grabbed and pulled off or led away. And then, after a flash of light just offscreen, they return with a dazed, zombie-like gaze.

Noah tackles an innocent elderly person, and they both thump to the ground. A predator’s house is littered with scores of children’s shoe (implying that the owners were all murdered by the fiend). A witch measures captive children and suggests she’ll place them in an oven and roast them. A house is set on fire, and it becomes a huge blaze.

Crude or Profane Language

The dialogue contains five uses of “h—” and three of “d–n.”

Drug & Alcohol Content

When Carruthers and Noah go to talk to a glaze-eyed Ben, the ex-cop wonders if Ben smokes weed. And when Noah goes to Carruthers’ house, the older man asks him if he wants a beer. (Then he quickly admits he was just kidding.)

Other Noteworthy Elements

Before actually meeting Carruthers, Noah and his friends sneak into the man’s garage looking for “clues.” And then they run in fear when he catches them there. (But Noah leaves his backpack behind, which Carruthers returns, along with a copy of the book, “All The President’s Men.”)

Ben steals some fireworks from his dad. Noah steals some keys and breaks into a person’s room.

Conclusion

Monster Summer is the kind of witchy, tween-focused horror pic you might see on the Disney Channel—the equivalent of lightweight Goosebumps fare from the 1990s.

The biggest plus here is Mel Gibson’s addition to the cast. Up against his young costars, Gibson sports a scruffy-bearded star power as he wrings everything he can out of his scenes with a languid charm.

There is a small dash of foul language and a bit of thumping, creepy violence, here. But the biggest drawback for families will likely be the transforming and menacing witch that feeds off spiritual energy from children, which is quite dark indeed.

This well-constructed Halloween matinee will likely find an audience among horror-lite fans. That said, many families with young kids may want to sweep their way past that baddie and her mysteriously dark spirituality.


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Bob Hoose

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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