Monolith (2016) User Reviews

Not as bad as the people are making out

[nisabine · 5/10 · 25 November 2017]

I don't normally write reviews but after watching this film & reading the negative 1 star reviews I felt I had to defend the film a little. Don't get me wrong the film is far from perfect & there is an awful lot wrong with it but I feel lots of people on here have been incredibly harsh.

First I will deal with some of the reviewers' main concerns about the set up of the film & 'plot holes' & then let you know my own issues with it.

1. Irresponsible mother - seems people are critical because she gives her son her phone to play with. I can totally see this happening, I see children all the time be given their parent's phone to play when trying to keep them entertained, for example when queuing. There are so many apps now that can do all kinds of things so don't think it is far fetched to see how it could be linked to the car & the child accidentally locks himself in.

2. The dirt road - Some people take issue with the on-board computer taking her down the dirt road in the first place, this should not have happened. Why not? The computer told the mother there was an accident on the freeway & there was a delay. The mother not wanting to get stuck in a huge traffic jam (who does?)tells the computer to find an alternative quickest route which it did.

3. Mother smoking weed in the desert - she decides to have a cigarette, no doubt because having your child locked in a car you can't break into is quite stressful & finds half a joint so smokes that instead. Again she is stressed and just resting for a second and needs to relax for a moment. From some of the negative reviews you would think that the mother called up Snoop Dogg & pals, forgot about the kid & went off for a non stop three day smoke session!

4. Removing the deer caused the car to roll backwards - if the car is on a gradient & the wheels were caught up in the deer then when deer is removed, the car would roll backwards with nobody in it to drive it.

5. Why is the kid wearing a bear costume when it is so hot? - anybody with small kids know that they can be very particular in what they want to wear & they don't care if an outfit is suitable for the current weather conditions. Remember they were only going for a short drive to Grandma's house & I am sure she would have air conditioning in the house. I don't believe the Mother was expecting to get trapped in the car in the desert for a couple of days, the bear costume would not have been an issue if he wanted to wear it.

6. Why would the car unlock the doors because it is falling off a cliff? - This would be a safety feature, modern cars now have something similar. Lots of cars now will automatically lock when you are driving but in an accident where airbags are deployed the locks automatically unlock, so you don't get trapped in the car after a collision. The car in the film is more advanced so it would have detected that it was falling so a collision was imminent so for safety unlocked itself.

Now my issues with the film (some have been raised with other reviewers):

1. Supposed to be more advanced car but when she calls people she has to press the touchscreen, even now we can dial people by voice.

2. I know smoking is bad for you etc but still lots of people do it so I think that it was laughable that the car had that warning message and told her to evacuate the car when she lit a cigarette. The car makers would surely know that some customers would like to smoke so this would not be a feature of the car.

3. Once the warning comes up about the smoking, the computer asks the mother if she wants to switch to manual, if she does it will switch all assisted features of the car off. The mother does go to 'full manual' so surely then the app would have been useless & the kid would not have been able to lock himself in.

4. The fire she sets near the aeroplane - this seemed quite a distance from the car so the problem here is, if the fire department did come out and came from the other direction & she was back at the car & fell asleep or past out from the heat etc then they may well have come dealt with the small simple fire & gone back again & completely missed her. Surely it would have been better to set a fire closer to the car so that whoever came would have seen her.

5. Letting the car roll of the cliff - I have a hard time with this because it was quite a drop & the kid could have been seriously injured or killed. Would you as a parent take that risk with your kids life?

6.Even getting passed that it is hard to believe that the car would still be working perfectly after the fall & she can simply drive off again -the film needed a better ending.

So all in all, not the best movie ever made but far from being the worst I have seen. No, that accolade is still held by the film 'Five Across the Eyes', check it out, then you will see what a truly dreadful movie looks like!

Dangerous A.I. piece of technology, that is, until you witness this ludicrous ending

[selfdestructo · 5/10 · 6 January 2022]

The spine of the DVD says "Horror" on it. Totally inaccurate. Monolith is one part survival thriller (low on thrills), and one part science fiction.

Home-wrecking former pop sensation mom is worried her guy is cheating on her, so she drives his armored ultra-high tech SUV with toddler in tow to pay him a visit. She gets re-routed by her "smart" vehicle onto a shortcut... through the desert. She hits a deer (or at least something with antlers), gets out to check on it, and, well, her little boy, playing with her cell phone, puts the vehicle into lockdown mode, trapping him inside. That is some irresponsible s#!t.

I liked the idea of this car, and where car technology is taking us. For the bulk of this film, anyhow, it seems like a feasible place in the future to go. A vehicle that takes safety to the nth degree, and you can have a conversation with it! (complete with A. I. communication barriers).

Unfortunately, not much happens in this film. There is a character set up where you kind of grow to dislike bad mom, but at the same time feel a little bad for her. Then she gets locked out, and spends the rest of the movie making futile attempts to get back in. I actually thought the lead actress (Katrina Bowden) in this was good. She doesn't play it overly dramatic, and I think ultimately grew as a character to not take her son for granted. Then there's this total cop-out of a resolution, that I think is best left undiscussed. It does raise a number of unanswered questions.

I am a fan of movies with a very small cast, limited locations, isolation. It held my interest enough to give it 5 stars.

beautiful visuals of Utah geology

[sacksdavid · 6/10 · 3 May 2017]

This movie has its issues but it also has entertainment value. If you enjoy endless vistas of desolate mountains then even if you don't care for the film itself, the heavy reliance on breathtaking shots of the multi-coloured Utah (likely the Paria mountains).

Beyond the geology and macho car, the kid is good and the hopeless terror of the protagonist is sometimes genuine, other times humorously not.

Rejected from Tensionfest in a very major way

[Aloysiusjumbo · 2/10 · 10 March 2017]

A Land Rover Discovery Sport that's been covered in cardboard and painted black locks itself with a young child inside. The mother tries to get the child out and succeeds.

And because I need five lines of text, I'm also writing this.

And this.

whoever wrote this nonsense should be left in the desert themselves!!!

[r_goodwin · 2/10 · 28 February 2017]

Well Where do we start with this one??Irresponsible wife takes a road trip across the desert with a small child in back seat.Yes really.The car is the safest car available,Futuristic/unbreakable/bulletproof/foolproof/drives itself etc. Well off she goes in it and the kid in tow.She doesn't get the technology of it so when computer tells her to take a short cut cos of an accident ahead she goes down a dirt track,and guess what there aren't any signs and its dark.Kid plays with his Bluetooth device and hey presto!!! He;s locked in Thats the concept of story!!!What happens from now on is the most unintelligent rubbish possibly to ever hit the screens YES THAT BAD.Sorry but the truth needs to be told.If you watch it believe me YOU WILL WANT TO REVIEW IT!!!You will feel that need!!!

Makes Frozen (the ski resort one) and Open Water seem like 127 Hours

[CranberriAppl · 7 May 2021]

Two hours of this is unnecessary. Right before the accident, the kid looks at his mom like "what the heck is wrong with you?" and it's so appropriate. I doubt the kid was told do to that. I caught this movie at the end where she SPOILER ALERT SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER sends the car over the cliff thinking that the tech would some how save the kid. Seeing that was so incredulous to me that I had to watch from the beginning.

I am one that thinks Lifetime makes mostly awful movies, but I'm not ashamed to say I watch them for background noise. This is not a movie they should be trying if they're not going to commit to it. They did another one with twins trapped in a pool that involved less stupid actions by the characters.

First off, if she and her husband could afford this futuristic car, then surely this kid would have his own iPad. Also, who doesn't know to maybe back up off the deer, grab the phone from the kid, and call for help? This set of events is just so ridiculous that it sets the tone.

Because the mom and kid are essentially the only two characters, this movie relies on the viewer being engaged enough to care about this ordeal. I'm not sure the actress pulls it off. I also find it hard to believe that not only does this car not have some sort of safeguard against this happening, but the only way to "trip" it is to shove the car off a cliff?! What made it even crazier was that it HAD to work otherwise the toddler would be dead and this would be a tragedy.

I really wouldn't waste your time.

Questions

[NYMovieWatcher · 1/10 · 25 March 2017]

The other reviews cover a lot of what I'd like to say. The movie is far too full of commercials. It's boring. It's tense but not for the right reasons. It's hard to like any of the characters.

Questions: Who slaps on a pair of leather pants when it's 108 degrees? Who puts their child in a fluffy bear suit on the same blazing hot day?

Wtf is everybodys problem?

[obeys · 6/10 · 18 October 2018]

The movie is not even close as bad as the user reviews are making it out to be. Seriously. There are syfy channel productions with a higher rating. And this is way above them. Nice idea, super clean cinematography (even though I normally don't like it like this) and the actress is also "ok". Sure there are cringe moments. But for a sci-fi TV movie that was all pretty much as passionate as it gets.

don't bother watching

[arniemall · 1/10 · 6 April 2017]

This has got to be one of the worst movies Lifetime has shown. Cringe-worthy. Unrealistic even for a Lifetime movie. The decisions this woman made from the beginning of the movie to the end would be comparable to those of a five year old. Just awful, awful, awful. I had to finally fast forward to see how it ended.

Monolith review

[marcellomonti · 6/10 · 19 August 2017]

I'm Italian but I have not been part of it. The film is not perfect (many mistakes by the plot and the actors) but I was very convinced of the concept of the story, taken from an Italian graphic novel. The protagonist might be less stupid, but the things he does go hand in hand with the plot context. The film deserves, a great innovation in Italian cinema, and a good bet for foreigners.

One Glaring Fault That No One Has Brought Up...

[Marc_Action · 3/10 · 5 May 2017]

Why would a highly intelligent, futuristic car built seemingly as a "guardian angel on wheels", take its occupants on a detour through the wilderness just to avoid an accident on the highway in the first place? I mean, this isn't just some sparsely-populated back-country road. It's a dirt road through the middle of the wilderness with zero traffic and zero human life!!!! The only thing around is a ghost utility company outpost and an airstrip long-abandoned by the time our main character comes along.

I mean, this dirt road shouldn't even be an option on a regular $100 GPS system from Walmart, let alone, as part of the navi system for a futuristic "smart" car. And on top of that, not one single other motorist took this detour!!! Nope, just the individual driving a rare "smart" car with far advanced systems. It makes everything that follows unwatchable because it's just too hard to believe the car got her lost in the first place.

It doesn't help that the mother would get the "Worst Mother of the Year" Award for her parenting skills (or lack there of)... But I digress.

Solid little thriller

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 20 October 2021]

Mother Sandra (well played with spunky charm to spare by Katrina Bowden) must race against time to get her infant son out of a fancy state-of-the-art super car that he's trapped inside of in the middle of nowhere.

Director/cowriter Ivan Silvestrini relates the gripping story at a brisk pace, takes time to develop the main character of Sandra, makes good use of the desolate and isolated desert central location, and generates a good deal of tension. Moreover, Bowden astutely captures the raw desperation and fierce determination of her character. A real nail biter.

A Mother's Worst Nightmare

[lavatch · 7/10 · 18 September 2020]

"Trapped Child" (a.k.a., "Monolith") is a preview of the cars of the future. The Monolith is billed as the most advanced and safest vehicle on the road. Yet for the protagonist Sandra, the vehicle becomes a death trap for her beloved little boy David.

Was it human error or a flaw in the Monolith's design that led to Sandra becoming stranded in the desert? She lit up a cigarette that may have blown the vehicle's mind. The only assistance she receives from the voice of "Lilith," the robotic brains of the Monolith, indicating that there is a danger of smoke. After Sandra stops and exists the vehicle, the little boy accidentally locks vehicle while fidgeting with the controls. He is thereby trapped in the car, and Sandra has no way to reenter the vehicle.

The actress performed admirably in conveying the nightmarish experience of seeking help in the wasteland. Her hopes are dashed at both a power plant devoid of humanity and an abandoned airplane. She finally comes up with an ingenious act of desperation to use the state-of-the-art vehicle to her advantage to reenter the car and save the life of little David.

While the production values were superb, the overall unpleasantness of the film was apparent not only in Sandra's seemingly hopeless situation, but the other characters she briefly encounters. The sleazy people she met at the convenience story were a motley crew, and her husband Carl was a lout and a womanizer. Instead of returning to L.A., Sandra might be better off staying in the desert and taking her chances on the Monolith.

It's watchable

[thebennetts-83398 · 5/10 · 17 January 2022]

Not sure why the negatives. The acting is decent. Effects on the car are cool. Shrug, movie was OK for me. Solid 5 out of 10. I have watched far worse.

Boring, just so boring overall!

[Alex2313 · 2 March 2017]

OK, it's not the worst movie I've ever seen but it's up there. First off, I think people should know that this movie has three different titles at the time of writing this review - it is known as Monolith, Trapped Child and (in the UK as) Locked In.

So the lady is given the ultimate safest car of the future as it is packed full of technology. The car can drive by itself via a computer while protecting anyone inside kinda like a mobile bank vault if you will.

Long story short, the lady takes to trip LA with her kid but gets herself lost along the way in the middle of nowhere, she hits something and stops to check, gives the kid her mobile/cellphone to play around while she checks on what she has hit.

With mother outside, the child access the controls of the car via the app and locks himself in, and that is pretty much the whole movie. The kid is Locked In. And for more then 40 odd minutes, we watch as the lady tries to break into the unbreakable car - hence why it's got boring fast.

The idea of this movie has kinda been done before, think Panic Room but the bad guys as the mother and the panic room is on wheels.

This whole movie could have been avoided if she had just given the kid a tablet to play with in the first place. Oh and listen out for the "Terminator" style music score throughout.

Unbelievably bad.

[werealwaysopen · 1/10 · 26 March 2017]

Lifetime basically says, "Hm, what are middle aged women most afraid of?" and then makes movies about it.

Absolutely useless person gets her infant son trapped in a magical future science car with magical future science protective features - like glass that won't even scratch or get dirty when hit repeatedly with rocks and comically oversized wrenches. It's supposed to be a commentary on giving away our power to machines that think for us. Except in this case, the car was smarter than the protagonist.

In response to this, she then fails every basic common sense survival situation decision-making process...seriously, by about halfway through you'll be voting for the desert to kill her, because she should not pass her limited intelligence on to her offspring. Her basic strategy is "cry a lot and smoke weed".

Ignoring the plothole goofs...like moving the deer away from the front of the car causes the car to suddenly start rolling *backwards*...and the terrible dream sequences full of terrible Lifetime acting...her final solution is to push the car off a cliff, believing it will unlock and her son won't be killed by falling hundreds of feet in a metal box. And why the heck would a car unlock its doors because it senses it's falling through the air?

Just an unpolished turd from start to finish.

ONE glaring major plot hole

[mariabaldinger-89863 · 1/10 · 2 August 2023]

This car is so smart that that it has every safety feature possible, it can even differentiate between the adult and child passengers by their weight....and yet there's no feature that keeps you from locking your kid in the car?????? That part was just too unbelievable to overlook.

This chick is without question, one of the dumbest people in the world and has no business traveling unaccompanied with a small child. Because of course when I travel with my child through a blazing hot desert, I make sure he's in a furry bear suit. It had a lot of promise but ultimately you can't get through so many "I can't believe she's that dumb" moments.

Utterly dreadful.

[bookergrimm · 1/10 · 1 May 2017]

Stupidest woman in the world throws her car off a cliff with her baby in it. Probably the worst film I have ever seen. Badly acted. Completely tripe in every respect. Should come with a government health warning. Feel your brain cells die as you watch. Actually dying in the desert would have been less painful than watching this.

Child locked in hi-tech car !

[saptesh786 · 7/10 · 18 June 2019]

A good car thriller. I Supposing it would be a 'Wrong Turn' type movie but actually found it like bollywood flick 'Trapped' starred by Rajkumar Rao. Good movie. A child is locked down in a high tech car accidently between the road trip with his mother. And mother trying her best to release her child but 'Vault' mode did not open so easily. What is then? See the movie. Although here rating are mostly negatives, but movie is watchable at once for thriller experience. However sometimes movie trails and we are losing attention, but again in last part we found it interesting. The car is attractive and every such a car is fascinating me ever. Acting by Katrina Bowden is well. Location and camera work is good and natural, it makes real feel in such story. This is plus point as me. Despite some loopholes movie is good and watchable.

Hard as a (Christine) rock

[kosmasp · 3/10 · 16 April 2017]

For a certain situation to happen, a lot of things have to go sideways. And you have to understand that it doesn't have to be logical, it just has to bring us where we end up. So the main character going there, is terrible, but to some extend acceptable. What is unacceptable though, is her behavior with a kid in the car.

Which is one of the points leading to a certain situation. But really there is no love lost for someone like that. It's tough to root for someone or feel for someone like that. Then again it's all about the kid isn't it? Yes and you could also argue, it's just a movie. And that's where it loses me or my interest. So the tension is almost completely gone, maybe if you accept certain things, you'll be on the edge of your seat. But I do doubt it very much

Interesting concept

[johnbamber-543-390505 · 7/10 · 2 January 2022]

I was pleasantly surprised at how entertaining this movie was. Between my shouting at the screen calling the mother a bonehead, the plot of this is in a word, plausible. It is possible that at some point in the future we'll have full AI assistance (think Amazon Alexa, Siri, etc...) living in the car and taking full control over everything. However, what would not be plausible would be this AI putting its passengers in any kind of danger.

The situation the mother and her baby found themselves in was 100% preventable, but plausible. The little boy was playing with his mother's phone which had the app for the car on it. He mistakenly opened it and swiped around, and activated the car's "Vault Mode" which locks the doors and puts the windows up. That's great if that was the intent, but I don't see that as happening the way it did in the movie if an actual car were made that had such a feature.

Multiple times the mom called for the AI assistant to unlock the doors/etc. The assistant ignored her -- If a car company actually made a vehicle with that feature and it had no way to recover from a mistaken lock, that's a huge company-bankrupting lawsuit waiting to happen... so obviously one must seriously suspend disbelief for this movie.

This is a good movie to watch when hanging with friends and having a few beverages. Being buzzed while watching this definitely helped.

The stupidest woman on the planet!

[tkarlmann · 1/10 · 16 June 2020]

Child Protective Services? You have a New Client! This mother is not mentally fit to care for a child! Giving a two/three-year old child marbles? Letting same child play with your cell phone that completely controls the car? Smoking w/child in car? Etc. Etc. Unforgivable, she is an unfit mother. This is how nature winnows out the unfit.

This is one of those movies that, unmercifully, just keeps getting worse & worse & worse ... After spending the night in the desert with an impenetrable car, what do you do? Why you push the car, with your child in it, off a convenient cliff, of course! Miraculously the car rights itself (????!!!??), unlocks, and all is better! Really? Just in the nick of time, to have a (sic)'happy' ending! Hogwash!

Did I mention the wolf/Coyote she chases away by screaming? We have that too, in this miserable excuse for a movie!

Well executed survival thriller...!

[kamalbeeee · 8/10 · 3 May 2021]

A mother tries to get out her child from a car it was locked automatically when she came out of emergency.. I dont bother about other reviewers and crictics...i lik this movie very much.. Nice story and screenplay and seat edge thriller.. Must watch for thriller fans..

Better Than Expected

[dariuslanghoff · 7/10 · 13 August 2017]

I have just finished watching this motion picture. And I have to say that the number of scathingly negative reviews tends to surprise me.

I start with a comparison and contrast, which I would have not thought before I would be willing to make now. There is this DUNKIRK across cinemas presently: a film critically acclaimed, lauded, appreciated, etc., and so on and so forth. And there is this TRAPPED CHILD.

The latter attracted my interest from start to finish never being boring - despite obvious flaws and imperfections. The former I found so unwatchably tedious - despite big budget production values - I turned it off after about 20 minutes. By the by, if I wish to learn history, I see a documentary, not a feature.

All in all, TRAPPED CHILD is an entertaining, optically attractive thriller (if only I knew where the scrapped 747 comes from - but that is a minor quibble).

Bad Cybertruck

[FixedYourEnding · 5/10 · 1 October 2022]

Everything is armored and automatic, is that safe, or rather a recipe for disaster? Well, find out when a suspective wife takes a completely unnecessary trip through LA desert. Surprisingly it is not unwatchable, and does keep the suspense going throughout the movie, however a few things really keeps it in the lower bracket of entertainment:

First - child is crying all the time, alarms are beeping, woman is shouting, it is just pathetic and unpleasant in a way that it does not advance the movie anywhere.

Second - the main character, Sandra, has every negative trait in the book, she is jealous, irresponsible, clingy, weak (physically and mentally), bad decision maker etc etc. You just want to throw something at the screen due to her stupid actions. At least she is a cute singer...

Third - for the life of me I could not understand why she took her child with her and not left him with her mother-in-law, even if she did decide to drive to LA, what was she hoping to do there with the child?

I think overall rank is somewhere between 4 and a 5, I decided to be generous and give it a 5 due to being at least interesting for the most part. Watch if are planing to buy a Cybertruck :-) Exact score: 45 / 100.