Monstrous

 Monstrous is a Christina Ricci-led psychological horror movie that... well, it's really hard to talk about without entering into spoiler territory. I'll try to keep them mild, but consider yourself warned.

 Ricci plays a woman moving in to a new town in California with her son (Santino Barnard), back at some point in the '50s. They have trouble fitting in at the new place, and it quickly becomes apparent they're fleeing some sort of bad domestic situation. Then a monster starts coming out of the lagoon out back to stalk first the boy, then the mother.

 There are a lot of problems with this film. Although it does manage some nicely atmospheric shots, it's not very visually appealing - This includes a betentacled, protean creature that I didn't find either scary or interesting to look at; Part of it is that the CGI used for it looks cheap, but mainly it's just that it doesn't really have a visual identity.
But the script's a bigger issue. It meanders a bit, and while the details do end up fitting together, I didn't find the journey interesting at all... especially when most of the details are borrowed from other, better movies. And yes, it does have a couple of gotcha! twists, one of which I guessed about a third of the way in. The other one is a bit bolder, but also completely unnecessary.

The ghost of Alien sequels past

 I feel kind of bad for bashing on Monstrous - it's got a honest attempt at mindfuckery going on, and a proper monster/ghost/spirit creature thing lurking around its edges. Effort was clearly expended in writing and making the film, what with all the foreshadowing and internal references; Its heart is in the right place, and it's got a good emotional core. This would all be meaningless if the protagonist wasn't up to snuff, but Christina Ricci gives a good performance as well - even when half of her acting notes could as just well be "put on a brave face" and her dialog, as written is... often not great.

 So give it a chance, I'm sure a lot of people will love it. Personally, though, I found it pretty boring. It seemed to me that director Chris Sivertson and writer Carol Chrest expended all their effort wrangling its puzzle into the shape of a movie, leaving little room for any other elements of the movie to breathe. A lot of the choices that render the movie problematic for most of its running time are deliberate and make sense in retrospect, but it takes so long to make that clear (and the journey there is so filled with tropes) that by the time the revelations come I personally found it impossible to give a shit.