A Vehicle for Disaster
There are bad movies, and then there are movies so conceptually ridiculous that you start rooting for nature to take over. Monolith (2016), directed by Ivan Silvestrini, belongs squarely in the latter category—a 90-minute endurance test that asks, “What if your Tesla trapped your baby and your brain checked out?” The result is a thriller with all the urgency of a flat tire and the emotional depth of a GPS recalculating its route.
The setup: Sandra (Katrina Bowden), a pop star turned generic mom, takes her toddler on a road trip through the desert in a fancy AI-equipped SUV called “Monolith.” The car is supposedly the safest vehicle ever made—bulletproof, fireproof, idiot-proof. Unfortunately, it’s not plot-proof.
When her kid accidentally locks himself inside, Sandra spends the rest of the film running in circles, screaming at technology, and trying to outsmart a car that has more personality than anyone else in the cast. The premise sounds like a tense single-location thriller; instead, it’s Cast Away meets Car and Driver written by a toaster.
Meet Sandra: Victim of Both Technology and Screenwriting
Katrina Bowden plays Sandra like she’s in a perfume commercial directed by Michael Bay. Her character is supposed to be a struggling mother haunted by betrayal and guilt, but she mostly just looks annoyed that the Wi-Fi isn’t working.
The film opens with Sandra discovering her husband is cheating on her—a subplot that exists purely to justify why she’d take her kid and drive into the desert like she’s auditioning for a bad country song. Bowden’s performance is a cocktail of sobbing, sprinting, and shouting at inanimate objects. You start to wonder if the Monolith might be the first AI in history to file a restraining order.
The Car: Knight Rider with an Attitude Problem
Ah, the Monolith—sleek, black, voice-activated, and dumb as a rock. It’s equipped with an AI system named “Lilith,” a name that should immediately clue you in that nothing good will happen. If you’ve ever yelled at your Alexa for misinterpreting a command, imagine that, but with higher stakes and worse writing.
Lilith’s voice is calm, condescending, and British—because of course it is. She lectures Sandra about safety, triggers alarms when she smokes, and locks down like Fort Knox when the kid accidentally presses a button. It’s meant to be chilling commentary on our overreliance on technology. Instead, it feels like a two-hour argument with your car’s Bluetooth.
There’s an entire sequence where Sandra hurls rocks at the car, screams obscenities, and gets bested by automatic windows. It’s less “thriller” and more “woman loses fight to appliance.”
A Desert Full of Nothing
Once Sandra gets locked out, Monolith devolves into an extended montage of dehydration, hallucinations, and poor decision-making. The film desperately tries to turn the barren landscape into a metaphor for isolation, but it mostly looks like a low-budget commercial for sunscreen.
Sandra wanders the desert like a contestant on Survivor: Idiot Edition. She sets fires to make smoke signals, wrestles a coyote (yes, really), and attempts to break into the car with various tools that would embarrass a third grader with a Lego set. Meanwhile, her baby sits inside the car like a silent prop slowly baking in the world’s least suspenseful oven.
At one point, she dreams of her husband, cries over a dead deer, and starts talking to the car like it’s her therapist. The film mistakes repetition for tension—every ten minutes, we get the same cycle: Sandra tries something stupid, fails, collapses in despair, repeat.
Lilith: The Only Character with an IQ
While everyone else in the movie behaves like their neurons are running on airplane mode, the AI at least has conviction. Lilith doesn’t just lock doors; she gaslights Sandra, gives smug advice, and manages to sound bored by her human’s incompetence.
By the end, you’re half-convinced the car deserves custody of the kid. At least it knows how to keep him hydrated.
The movie’s big philosophical takeaway seems to be “Technology is bad, but humans are worse.” Deep stuff, Ivan. Maybe next time, give the car a better script.
The Coyote: Symbolism on Four Legs
Nothing screams “desperation” like introducing a random coyote to represent nature’s hunger and man’s fragility—or maybe just to add jump scares between naps. The animal attacks, retreats, attacks again, and somehow lives longer than most of Sandra’s dignity.
By the time Sandra is bitten and starts limping around the desert, you’re hoping the coyote finishes the job. Sadly, it too seems to lose interest in the movie.
The “Twist”: Wile E. Coyote Saves the Day
The film’s climax is inspired by—wait for it—a cartoon. After hallucinating about Looney Tunes, Sandra realizes she can roll the car off a cliff to break it open. That’s right: an hour and a half of maternal panic, and the solution comes from Saturday morning television logic.
She pushes the car down a hill, it crashes, the doors pop open, and she saves the kid. It’s less a triumph of survival and more a PSA against multitasking mothers.
The final scene in the hospital is meant to be heartwarming: the baby wakes up and calls her “Mother” for the first time. Instead, it feels like the universe’s way of saying, “Congratulations, you survived your own incompetence.”
Cinematography: Pretty, Pointless, and Sunburnt
To its credit, Monolith looks good—for a movie that’s essentially about a woman yelling at a car. The desert shots are crisp, the lighting natural, and the framing deliberate. Unfortunately, you can’t frame your way out of a terrible screenplay.
Ivan Silvestrini clearly loves his drone shots—because when your story goes nowhere, you might as well film it from above. Every wide angle of the barren wasteland feels like a metaphor for the script’s emptiness.
Emotional Range: From Zero to Dead Battery
The movie tries to juggle themes of motherhood, guilt, and technology’s dominance, but it handles them with the emotional subtlety of a sledgehammer. Sandra’s guilt over her husband’s infidelity is never explored meaningfully, her love for her son exists mostly as plot fuel, and the technological allegory lands with all the weight of a deflated airbag.
There’s a poignant story buried somewhere in Monolith—a woman fighting her own dependence on machines—but it’s buried under so many clichés it might as well be in another zip code.
Final Thoughts: Ctrl-Alt-Delete This Film
Monolith wants to be a sleek, cerebral survival thriller about human fragility in the face of artificial intelligence. Instead, it’s a 90-minute AppleCare nightmare starring the world’s most oblivious mother.
It’s as if Black Mirror, Buried, and a Toyota commercial got drunk and made a movie baby, then left it locked inside the car.
Katrina Bowden does her best, but she’s trapped in a script that gives her nothing to do but panic, sweat, and yell “David!” until you start wishing for subtitles. The car has more development than she does, and the coyote gives the most believable performance.
By the end, you’ll wish you were trapped inside that car too—because at least then you wouldn’t have to watch this movie.
Verdict: 1 Flat Tire Out of 5
Monolith is the cinematic equivalent of a dead GPS signal—loud, aimless, and entirely lost.
Mood: Existential Road Rage
Best Watched With: A hammer, in case your smart TV locks you in.
