“I wanted to retain that ethos [from the first film], but I wanted to create a completely different film entirely,” says director Tom Green, promoting the now-available to own sequel Monsters: Dark Continent.

The first film thrust writer-director Gareth Edwards into the spotlight, earning him enough cred to get him at the helm of last year’s Godzilla and next year’s Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One. Monsters was a character-driven, calmly-paced sci-fi pic that followed a man and woman as they travel through an “infected zone” crawling with terrifying creatures. The follow-up is decidedly different, focusing on U.S. Army soldiers dealing with an insurgency and a proliferation of Monsters in the Middle East.

“The obvious jumping-off point for me was war films, so that’s very much where I made my focus,” Green says. “I suppose it was different in [those] terms, in that it had, perhaps, a stronger-driving genre through it. Although, I think what’s similar about the first one is it’s not a classic structure, it’s not a conventional three-act structure; it’s more of a meditative piece.”

Check out the interview below.

Monsters: Dark Continent is out now on Australian Blu Ray, DVD and download (iTunes, Google Play, etc).

Synopsis for Monsters: Dark Continent:

Ten years on from the events of Monsters, and the ‘Infected Zones’ have spread worldwide.

Two soldiers embark on a life-altering mission through the dark heart of monster territory in the deserts of the Middle East. By the time they reach their goal, they will have been forced to confront the fear that the true monsters on the planet may not be alien after all.