It takes some guts for any sci-fi film – especially a no-budget one – to pick that title, and to include some eerie wisps of Ligeti-like sounds to get the cosmic hairs rising on the back of your neck. When Monolith isn’t referencing 2001: A Space Odyssey, it also bears some resemblance to Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, with its alien artefacts turning out to be filled with indecipherable glyphs when scanned. But Matt Vesely’s impressive debut ably stakes out its own territory, not least in the vast distances covered by a single on-screen actor and a handful of vocal performances.
After being fired for not doing due diligence on her journalism, the Interviewer (Lily Sullivan) is now slumming it for Beyond Believable, a paranormal podcast. On the hunt for a non-laughable story, an email lands in her inbox directing her to someone called Floramae King regarding “The Brick”. With some prodding, this former housekeeper (the voice of Ling Cooper Tang) tells her story to the Interviewer; in the wake of a traumatic incident in the family she worked for, she received a mysterious black stone with a potent aura. Following up with the art dealer (the voice of Terence Crawford) to whom the brick was sold, the Interviewer learns – as her podcast starts to rack up hits – that there are dozens of these artefacts worldwide, all mysteriously materialising in the lives of their keepers and inducing disturbing visions.
Along with its grand predecessors, Monolith is equally part of the micro sci-fi tradition of the likes of Chris Marker (La Jetée) and Shane Carruth (Primer). Never seeing the other interlocutors heightens its sense of leaning into a metaphysical void. The Interviewer strains outwards to the world just like Ian, her long-necked turtle, always approaching her subjects with, in Sullivan’s shrewd rendering, an outwardly friendly but entitled scepticism.
Where Arrival was concerned with the act of communication, Vesely’s film has eyes fixed on the event horizon: truth. How to locate it, our rabid appetite for it in the digital age, and how the latter impedes our fidelity to the former task. As the Interviewer racks up recordings and shuffles spectograms to edit them as she wants, she is slow to notice the mystery coalescing in her own past. Perhaps the wrap-up, as the arc bends inexorably back towards her, clings to terra cognita a little too hard, but this fastidious, hermetic package invites repeat investigation.
• Monolith is available on digital platforms on 26 February, and is streaming on Binge in Australia.
