A small rural town finds far more than it bargained for when a giant Buddha statue is unearthed from the ground in Monstrous, a compact 2022 American genre film directed by Chris Sivertson.
What is Monstrous about?
The town's mayor sees the unearthed statue as a ready-made tourist draw, a chance to put a quiet rural community on the map. What follows complicates that plan in ways the town is not prepared for, as the discovery stirs up consequences no one anticipated. Sitting across fantasy, horror, mystery and thriller, the story treats the statue less as scenery and more as the trigger for everything that unravels afterward, keeping its focus on a community reckoning with something far stranger than a tourist attraction.
About the cast
Christina Ricci anchors Monstrous, with Santino Barnard, Don Baldaramos and Colleen Camp filling out the town's residents. Lew Temple, Carol Anne Watts, Peter Hodge and Nick Vallelonga round out the cast. It is an ensemble built around a single American small-town setting rather than a globe-spanning production.
Context & significance
Monstrous carries a runtime of just 40 minutes, shorter than a typical feature and closer to the length of a mid-length genre short, which suits its single-location, single-premise setup. Released in 2022 under Chris Sivertson's direction, it sits in the tradition of small-town-uncovers-something-ancient stories, blending fantasy and horror elements with a mystery-thriller pace rather than committing fully to any one of those genres. That compressed length also means the film moves quickly from discovery to consequence, without the subplots a longer feature might carry.
Watching Monstrous on Ktime
Monstrous streams on K-Time with Persian dub and Persian subtitle options, so Farsi-speaking viewers can pick whichever suits them. All that watching requires is logging into a free K-Time account — no purchase, no add-on tier. K-Time's Farsi-first interface is built for diaspora audiences who want genre titles like this one presented clearly in their own language.