Abused as a child, Aileen Wuornos becomes a prostitute at age 13 and begins murdering her clients for revenge.

Rating: 10/10 (16 July 2008)

Released in 2003, Monster is based on the true story of Aileen Wuornos (Charlize Theron), a serial killer who was executed in Florida in 2002, for murdering seven men (directed and written by Patty Jenkins). Abused as a child, Aileen becomes a prostitute at age 13 and begins murdering her clients for revenge. Monster shows convincingly how a person who is brought up in an environment of abuse, without love or parental direction, will have an extremely hard time breaking free from the vicious cycle. The abused can become the abuser and can possibly never find the true meaning of love. Aileen experiences a combination of horrendous circumstances, including repeated abuse, parental neglect, and even abandonment. Such abuse can make anybody grow up to be a "monstrous" individual, especially if no one believes in or gives her a chance. Aileen's life is a vivid and morbid illustration of this cycle.
The transition from abused to abuser occurs when Aileen murders a client who has tortured her. After enduring sadistic and inhuman treatment, Aileen is finally able to retrieve her gun and kill her tormentor. When she realizes she has shot all of her bullets, she then beats the rapist with her gun in a rage. After she realizes he is dead, she begins screaming wildly, throws herself on the ground, and beats the ground with her hands. Theron's performance is riveting because she is so into her character that we believe she actually is Aileen having a meltdown. Having been raped as a child repeatedly by her father's best friend, Aileen had built up a wall of defense against reality. Her father did not believe her story and beat her for telling him about it. The absence of love and positive role models drove her to become a prostitute by the age of 13. She naively sought love through sexual contact with men who treated her with contempt.
This scene uses selective rack focus, in which the camera continually switches back and forth between Aileen and the rapist. The rapist is not shown as Aileen shoots and empties the gun on him; instead, the selective rack shot focuses on her. It then switches back to the abuser, now dead. This technique serves to juxtapose the abused and the abuser. The low key lighting represents impending doom, which also reinforces the importance of this scene as a turning point. The scene is extremely disturbing and shows Aileen becoming trapped in the vicious cycle. It is also one of the most dramatically effective, because Aileen Wuornos' anger, hate, and despair are cold-heartedly and realistically displayed.
While Aileen's first murder was justified for self-defense, her second murder was premeditated. This second scene marks the beginning of her deliberate killing spree. Aileen's first, unexpected murder has given her the courage to keep killing because she decides ahead of time to kill her very next client. After her second victim is dead, she smokes a cigarette and looks at him sadistically as he lies on the ground. Aileen perhaps feels nothing for the man she has just murdered, and this lack of empathy will enable her to keep on killing.
Aileen shoots her second victim at brutally close range, which underlines her lack of empathy. The camera then shows a close-up of her smoking a cigarette calmly as though nothing has happened. The close-up shot in this scene emphasizes both Aileen's cold-heartiness and magnifies her transformation from the prey to the hunter. The selective shot, flashing between Aileen and her victim, illustrates Aileen's position of power over her victim, which most abusers feel. Afterwards, the smoke from her cigarette forms a cloud over her face, making her appear disturbed and "monstrous." As Aileen drives away from the murder scene in her victim's car, her intense demeanor reflects the "grim reaper." She is turning into a killing machine.
In A Simple Plan, directed and written by Scott B. Smith, the character Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton) also gets caught in a cycle of murders and tries to cover up his tracks. Whereas Aileen kills out of revenge for prior abuses and to feed her hatred for men, Hank murders people to keep the money he and his accomplices have found, as well as to cover up previous murders. Aileen may not have acquired the moral understanding to change the malicious course she is on; however, Hank may be morally aware of his situation, yet the cycle becomes too strong for him to break free.
Monster shows how people like Aileen, who grew up with a history of abuse, find it hard to break free from the brutal cycle, because breaking free begins with the realization and acknowledge there is a problem; especially,this is why Aileen becomes a cold, rigid, impulsive,killer of men. In the end, she kills a kind and innocent man who only wanted to help her. She feels forced into killing him after he accidentally sees her gun. Aileen does not want leave any loose ties or witnesses. For the first time she realizes she cannot break free from her "monstrous" cycle. When Aileen hears the ghastly screams of a good man pleading for his life, she screams simultaneously out and heart-breaking because of the innocent blood on her hands and her conscience, which she has not shown until this scene. This scene shows the overwhelming odds stacked against her; and after this scene her deeds finally caught up with her and just like her start in life, Aileen's life ends tragically. The movie ends with Aileen being executed.
Monster is a learning experience for people who might see dysfunctional people but not the path of life they're taken. It is important to know the reason why these people are failures and not write them off. Monster is a phenomenal movie to see with, Charlize Theron giving the performance of a lifetime.