By Gavin Boyle
The David Henrie-directed, Mel Gibson-starring movie MONSTER SUMMER will make its streaming debut on Paramount+ on July 1.
“When a mysterious force begins to disrupt their big summer fun, Noah and his friends team up with a retired police detective to embark on a monstrous adventure to save their island,” a synopsis of the movie reads.
Henrie and Gibson were both excited to work on the movie for families. Though it features scary moments, they are tastefully done so as to not scar younger audiences.
“I feel that there is a massive underserved market out there for people looking for content that won’t scar them and that they won’t have to worry about. It’s a problem nowadays that when I go to the movie theater, I have to review everything before I go in…I’m having to look at everything before I bring my kids into the movie theaters,” Henrie told Movieguide® last September. “That’s an issue we didn’t have 20 years ago when I was growing up.”
“I read the script, and it instantly reminded me of when I was a kid, and my dad would take me from school and we’d go watch movies,” he later added, explaining why he was excited to join the project. “So [the script] gave me a warm feeling. There was like this hug I got when watching movies with my father as a kid, so it brought that back to me.”
Related: MONSTER SUMMER Director Says Movie Will Scare, Not Scar
Rather than fall into the tropes that the horror genre has come to embody — jump scares, occultism, gore and the like — the movie personifies fear through a character that the young protagonists work to overcome.
“A lot of times in fairy tales, fear is personified by a dragon or by some mythical monster, and what that’s trying to do is teach kids that later in life there will be things that hold you back from your potential that you’re going to have to slay, and that’s why dragons guard gold — because gold symbolizes, to a child, a potential power that they could have but they don’t yet have,” Henrie explained. “But there’s an inherent amount of fear that comes with that and that’s okay, as long as it’s not empty fear.”
Henrie and the rest of the cast and the crew did a terrific job of achieving this goal. Though the move could be intense for some younger audiences, in general it is acceptable for even young teenagers, a feat exceedingly rare for a horror movie. A portion of Movieguide®’s review reads:
In many ways, MONSTER SUMMER is very clean with no overt sex and almost no foul language. There are also Christian symbols and allusions. However, the movie reveals frightening things about witches, especially their ability to appear as normal next-door neighbors. Also, the final showdown with the witch is extremely scary. Therefore, MOVIEGUIDE® recommends caution for younger teenagers.
Though the movie premiered last October, it never released domestically. Now, however, families will have the opportunity to enjoy MONSTER SUMMER as it hits Paramount+ on July 1.
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