MONSTERS, INC.

MONSTERS, INC. (vt HIDDEN CITY [1999]: USA working title according to IMDb). Pete[r] Docter, dir. David Silverman and Lee Unkrich, co-directors. Dan Gerson, Andrew Stanton, script. USA: Pixar Animation and Disney (prod.) / Buena Vista (most dist.), 2001. Billy Crystal, John Goodman, James Coburn, Jennifer Tilly, Bonnie Hunt, Mary Gibbs, Steve Buscemi, featured voices.

G-Rated animation from the makers of TOY STORY (q.v., this section). In a dimension parallel to ours, monsters work for a power company, going through portals into our world to bring back the screams of children to power their world. The portals are closet doors on the kids' side—there really are monsters in kids' closets—and closet doors on the monsters' side, but closet doors archived in a high-tech system and placed for use inside a very high-tech electronic framework. The classic dystopian scene in which the male lead is confined and tortured in some high-tech device is recycled and revised to have the little-girl heroine held down to have imposed upon her a machine that will drain her scream power (cf. and contrast, e.g., We and Nineteen Eighty-Four under fiction; THX 1138, 1984 (film), and RUNNING MAN under drama). Note this film well for fantasy/horror/SF variations on the theme of the portal and the torture of the hero. (The little girl is rescued, and the end of the film shows that the laughter of children is a finer source of power than their screams.)