2010’s “Monsters” was an unusual feature. The directorial debut for Gareth Edwards, the picture set out to find intimate spaces of human connection while standing in the shadow of building-sized alien invaders. It was low-tech and largely uneventful, but it had imagination, with Edwards’s strange vision contributing to an unexpectedly restrained sci-fi production. Five years later, there’s a sequel, and one without Edwards, who went on to make a true monster movie with 2014’s “Godzilla” update. His touch is profoundly missed in “Monsters: Dark Continent,” which attempts to keep the aliens-as-background-noise approach, while filling the foreground with an unreasonably oppressive, generic war film. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

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