Director: Tom DeLonge
Strange lights over the Southern California coast send a group of aimless teenagers chasing a mystery none of them are prepared for in "Monsters of California," the 2023 directorial debut of musician Tom DeLonge.
What is Monsters Of California about?
Dallas Edwards spends his days drifting between skate spots and half-finished plans with a loose crew of friends who share his restlessness. That drift ends when a string of unexplained events, lights in the sky, static on the radio, neighbors acting strangely, starts stacking up around their neighborhood. What begins as an excuse to skip a boring summer turns into something closer to obsession as Dallas pulls his friends into an amateur investigation, piecing together rumors, old family secrets, and government-adjacent whispers that don't add up to any single tidy answer. The search pushes the group past the usual boundaries of their town and into territory that reframes what Dallas thought he knew about his own family and the quiet coastline he grew up on.
Cast & crew
Jack Samson leads the young ensemble as Dallas, playing the character's curiosity as equal parts bravado and genuine unease. Jared Scott and Gabrielle Haugh fill out the friend group with an easy, unpolished chemistry, while veteran performers Casper Van Dien and Richard Kind appear in supporting adult roles that anchor the film's stranger turns in something more familiar.
Context & significance
"Monsters of California" marks Tom DeLonge's first feature as director, drawing on his long-running public interest in unexplained aerial phenomena and folding it into a coming-of-age framework rather than a straight science-fiction thriller. The result sits closer to a teen mystery adventure, using the paranormal premise as a backdrop for a story about friendship and outgrowing a hometown, with Southern California's suburban sprawl doubling as both setting and source of its underlying unease.
Where & how to watch
"Monsters of California" streams on K-Time with a free account login, and the film includes both Persian dub and Persian subtitle options for viewers who want to follow it in Farsi. K-Time's Farsi-language browsing experience is built with the Iranian diaspora in mind, making it simple to find and queue titles like this one.