An investigative journalist (Lily Sullivan) has suffered a career setback. Hoping to salvage her reputation with a new podcast about unexplained phenomenon, she retreats to her parents’ posh pad in the Australian wilderness to brainstorm some ideas.
“I need a story,” she tells her boss on the phone. To paraphrase Apocalypse Now, for her sins, they gave her one.
Monolith, written by Lucy Campbell and directed by Matt Vesely, is confined to one location, with a single actress interacting with other characters online and over the telephone.
The journalist, at first reluctantly, and then with single-minded vigor, pursues a juicy conspiracy story revolving around the mysterious distribution of “black bricks” that exert a kind of power over those who receive them.
As she assembles and submits episodes of her podcast, her listeners begin to take notice, and soon her inbox is full of testimony from people who’ve had experiences with these bricks, the effects of which include visions, loss of appetite, cognitive decline, and occasionally a fatal illness.
As often happens with conspiracy cases, the reporter gets swept up and goes down a very deep, dark rabbit hole, that originates surprisingly close to home.
Lily Sullivan dramatically carries Monolith and she’s quite up to the task, as her increasingly odd situation requires a fully stocked arsenal of emotional firepower. She threatens, cajoles, pleads, and does a remarkable job inhabiting what appears to be a nervous breakdown of some sort, that also could be a fight for her very soul.
Sullivan’s transformation from a sulky ego-driven internet personality to an obsessed participant in her own developing story, is astonishing and completely believable.
Well worth the watch, in my opinion.
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