Lily Sullivan stars in a triumph of one-woman, one-location, one-great-idea storytelling. Photo / Supplied
Lily Sullivan stars in a triumph of one-woman, one-location, one-great-idea storytelling. Photo / Supplied
Every now and then a small film comes along with an even smaller cast and proves you don’t need money, CGI and big studios to make great cinema.
Monolith is just such a triumph of one-woman, one-location, one-great-idea storytelling. It’s the feature debut of Australian film-maker Matt Vesely and starsAussie up-and-comer Lily Sullivan.
She plays a podcaster investigating why mysterious black bricks are being delivered to people around the world. Echoing the Tom Hardy solo phone-call film Locke, Monolith spends most of its time on the inquisitive face of its nameless lead as she communicates by phone and voicemail with people who have received the strange artefact.
The high-concept sci-fi thriller is set solely in the interviewer’s parents’ palatial modernist home, with only the occasional dreamlike dramatisation cutting into her probing conversations.
But thanks to a well-crafted script, Monolith overcomes the challenges of keeping a one-actor show interesting. What starts as a curious tale of someone creating a podcast – unpromisingly titled “Beyond Believable” – soon gathers a near-suffocating intensity as the journalist becomes part of the story. That narrative lurches into some strange choices towards the end but Sullivan is superb throughout, helping build Monolith into something gripping and original.
Rating out of 5: ★★★★ ½
Monolith, directed by Matt Vesely is in cinemas now.
