Los Angeles film critic Justin Chang reviews "The Monster."

The film has an eerily WTF arbitrariness that should be the domain of more films in the genre.

In Bryan Bertino’s new film, a monster movie monikered simply as “The Monster,” the real monster is childhood in neglect. No, wait: It’s single motherhood. No, wait! It’s alcoholism! All three of these things are true for a short while until Bertino introduces the monster of the title, which happens to be an actual monster […]

The Devil is in the details, the old saying goes. And that applies to movies as well as the plans we make in life, and how we execute them. "The Monster" is sort of a Son (actually Daughter) of Babadook, a mother and child vs. beast thriller that never ratchets up much in the way…

Writer-director Bryan Bertino delivers an admirably lean-and-mean horror story that creates a tense mood before the scary stuff even starts.

Trapped in a car in the woods, Lizzy (Ella Ballentine) and her mother (Zoe Kazan) encounter a mysterious creature in a horror movie beset by a leaden script, slow pacing and a disappointing reveal.

Zoe Kazan stars in Bryan Bertino’s third feature, 'The Monster,' as a single mother navigating a deeply conflicted relationship with her young daughter, played by Ella Ballentine.

There's little originality scared up by "The Monster," but that doesn't make the horror flick easier to watch through your fingers.

'The Monster,' the new horror film from 'The Strangers' director Bryan Bertino taps into, and subverts, the mother as monster trope.