They are:
- Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, 2023)
- The Host (Bong Joon-ho, 2006)
- The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2005)
- Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
- The Mist (Frank Darabont, 2007)
- A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018)
- Trollhunter (André Øvredal, 2010)
- Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008)
- Prey (Dan Trachtenberg, 2022)
- Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)
The tricky thing is that what constitutes a monster movie is subjective at the edges - I’d personally not have included Prey or Pan’s Labyrinth (if you want a great GdT monster movie then it’d be his first Hellboy) but I’d say The Mist should be in.
My reasoning against The Mist is that monsters can be replaced with just a natural disaster, say flood (EXPLICITLY BIBLICAL FLOOD FROM GOD, for all our sins!), and it would be enough to roll all the same social and personal drama that was for me the core of the movie. There’s a clever lovecraftian lifehack of never describing your monsters too much, but my pov that it was just a context for all of us to despise this cultist nutjob queen and feeling trapped there with her and other characters.
I won’t usually hold IT over this movie, but I’d put it on the list instead of The Mist since Pennywise is clearly the main attraction of the movie and overcoming it is the goal that’s obvious from the very start.
I’d be interested to hear what makes it fit.