Little Monsters Review (Film, 2019)

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Be a superhero.”

At the end of the second act of Little Monsters, David is having a quiet conversation with Audrey about her work. She is a kindergarten teacher, and she is good at her job. He’s taken aback when she actually speaks like a normal adult for the first time in front of him. The audience has already seen this, but the families of young children would never because it would change the teacher/student dynamic in a bad way.

Little Monsters is a horror/comedy film that is as much a campy zombie film as it is a commentary on teaching. David, the lead singer of a death metal band, breaks up with his longtime girlfriend. He moves in with his sister Tess and her son Felix. Tess sets an ultimatum that David needs to actively contribute to the household or move out. He agrees and takes Felix to school. This is where David meets Miss Caroline, aka Audrey, Felix’s teacher. She is a bright ray of sunshine, greetings students, singing songs, playing games, and humoring lovestruck dads and helicopter parents with great ease.

David tries to make a move on Audrey by agreeing to chaperone a field trip to a local farm and amusement park. This gives him a fast pass ticket to a botched military experiment that is flooding the countryside with zombies. Now David, Audrey, and a dozen or so kindergarten students are playing a fun game of tag with zombies that are actively eating any person or animal they encounter.

Writer/director Abe Forsythe’s screenplay is the star of the film. Little Monsters is the merciful modern horror film that is smart enough to realize that audiences know what zombies are. Unless you have some radical departure from the rules (like 28 Days Later or Shaun of the Dead), the audience doesn’t need an exposition dump to understand the walking dead. Little Monsters takes it a step further, with the military utterly unfazed by a zombie encounter that is terrorizing a smaller community.

More importantly, Little Monsters is a horror film that uses the zombie metaphor in a vastly different way. Yes, there’s the undercurrent of military experimentation and not being able to trust the intentions of the grand government institution meant to defend us. Yes, there’s the shock of losing your humanity but not your life and not really being able to trust your neighbor. Little Monsters layers in the teaching angle that constantly pays off in really thoughtful ways.

Children, especially young children, can act like the titular Little Monsters. They are too young in kindergarten to have developed or really understand a social filter, so they generally say whatever is on their mind. To an adult, Felix is being bullied because he doesn’t have a dad and has food allergies. To the children, they are just saying that Felix doesn’t have a dad and that his snacks are different.

At the kindergarten age bracket, bullying is hard to deal with because the children do not have the emotional intelligence to really understand that their own words and actions can impact other people. You teach by example, demonstrating kindness and compassion in everything you do. You do your best to address intentional behavior (they might not understand how their words could hurt someone, but they do understand that kicking someone can hurt, for example) while using rockier moments as an opportunity for everyone to learn. The one student might start crying, so you do your best to remove them from the group and help them regain their composure, while also reminding the whole class that it’s okay to cry sometimes, everyone has emotions, etc.

There’s a particularly unnerving scene in Little Monsters that feels all too real for a teacher who has been through it. David accidentally gives Felix potato chips that have dairy in them. Why would plain chips have dairy? That’s a question everyone with a dairy allergy asks on the regular. Felix starts to go into anaphylaxis in front of his class.

Audrey doesn’t miss a beat. She doesn’t break. She separates Felix from the group and tells the class that everything will be alright and Felix just needs some space. She searches for her EpiPen, which was stolen by a zombie, so David gives her one. Audrey goes to inject the shot like she is trained to, but David insists on doing it himself. He misses and stabs himself. Audrey stops him from trying to reinject into Felix (these, sadly, only had one dose each and even if they were multi-dose, cross-contamination is still a threat) and sets a plan in motion to recover Felix’s extra EpiPen from the zombie hoard. Any break in the perfect teacher facade is done quietly and directly to David; the class itself is addressed with a smile and clear directions: give Felix space and hold hands until Miss Caroline comes back.

Everyone is fine until Audrey leaves to recover the EpiPen. David is not Audrey. David is not a teacher. David does not understand the developmental psychology of children that young. His body language, his facial expression, and his tone of voice start to set off the class. Everyone is upset and the panic is not helping Felix remain calm. David has created a feedback loop of fear and anxiety and is struggling not to panic.

David is only able to redirect their focus when he perks up and copies Audrey’s techniques. This group responds well to songs. He asked them to sing a song and even picks one student to start them off. Only then does David begin to understand what it’s like to actually have any control over a classroom of students this young who are not yet capable of grappling with the gray area of life. They can understand clear tasks when they are asked or invited to do them. “Do you want to sing a song?” Yes. “What’s your favorite song.” They name it. “Can you lead them?” The student starts and everyone joins in.

If the teacher is happy, they’re happy. If the teacher is upset, they’re upset. And if the teacher ever yells, they’re terrified and don’t know what to do. Elementary school students on a whole are so young that an adult yelling at them can actually register as a traumatic event and negatively impact their ability to actively participate in whatever activity they were doing when yelled at. Yelling is awful classroom management at any level, but unacceptable with children so young.

Audrey is placed in stark opposition to popular children’s TV host Teddy McGiggle. Teddy is also visiting the same farm as the class to film an episode of his show. He immediately picks Audrey out of the crowd and tries to hit on her in front of a crowd of kindergarten students, parents, and teachers. She does not crack the perfect teacher facade, but her body shows how uncomfortable she is with the situation. Teddy’s language is not inappropriate when he’s in performance mode, but his intention and focus on Audrey is.

Teddy has the entertainment side of teaching down, but has no actual compassion for the people around him.  The kids love him when he’s on and fear him when he willingly breaks in front of them. Audrey refuses to let her guard down once, even when she realizes that the world might literally be ending around her classroom. Her responsibility is to her students and she will stay on 24 hours a day if she needs to in order to keep them safe and calm until she returns them to their parents.

Teddy cannot do that. Once danger hits, he refuses to help anyone but himself. He starts cursing and yelling in front of the students, describing in graphic detail what is happening. Audrey cannot and will not allow this to go on. David might get the most honest conversation with the real Audrey, but Teddy is the one who learns how serious Audrey is about her duty to protect her students.

These few moments just scratch the surface of what Abe Forsythe achieved with this film. Little Monsters is one of the most realistic films I’ve ever seen about the teacher experience. Sure, we’re not being sent out to protect our students during the zombie apocalypse (yet). We are, however, put in charge of their education, their mental and emotional development as people, and their safety while in our classroom. We have to be prepared to take control and remain calm even when our own lives can be in danger. Substitute zombies for some of the other horrible things that can happen at schools and you see how honest and realistic this film is when dealing with education.

Little Monsters is a fun horror film. It also takes the safety and well-being of the kindergarten students seriously. Everything else is played broadly for laughs. The balance works well because the screenplay refuses to play the profession of teaching as a joke. Once the threat is established, the narrative focus is protecting the children. The level of active gore and destruction decreases to quick glimpses of the zombie horde, only escalating further if necessary to maintain the safety of the children. It’s a surprisingly delicate touch for an undoubtedly campy horror film.

Little Monsters is currently streaming on Hulu.