Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you an episode from the 2020 series Monsterland,
titled Newark New Jersey. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
Back in February, strange blue comets fell on Newark, New Jersey. No one knew exactly what
they were or why they had come in the middle of winter, but the event became known as "The
Fall". These comets turned out to be strange creatures that some people began to call "angels",
although they were wingless and bony, and their eyes were hollow. They looked more monstrous
than anything holy, so it made people wonder if they came to save the world or to destroy it.
Now in the present, Brian is at the supermarket and on top of his groceries, he decides to
also buy a doll. At the check-out, the cashier accidentally drops a bunch of coins, triggering
some bad memories that cause Brian to flee with his things without waiting for the change. When
he arrives home, Brian wraps up the doll. Using a marker from a drawer full of them, he writes
on it his daughter's name, Tabitha, before adding the gift to an enormous pile near a dying tree.
Then he spends the afternoon watching tv and drinking beer, and he's still there when his
wife Amy comes home from work. Amy urges Brian to change and get ready so they can leave for their
support group, but Brian refuses to go because the parents in that group aren't the same as them.
Those couple's kids are dead while Tabitha's just lost, which means they could still find her.
This is why Brian still keeps up the Christmas decorations and everything in Tabitha's room.
Amy understands it's hard for him, but she wishes he communicated more because she got
her shift covered just for this, which isn't an easy task to achieve at a police station.
Remembering their psychologist said support groups could help them move on, Amy decides to go on her
own anyway. The following day, Brian visits a hypnotherapist, who hypnotizes him to help him
revisit the memory of the afternoon Tabitha went missing sixteenth months ago. Brian had picked up
Tabitha from ballet and took her to get ice cream. There was a dog outside the store, and Tabitha
kept insisting she wanted to go out and pet it, so Brian let her go outside as long as he could still
see her from the store's glass facade. However when the cashier accidentally dropped his change,
Brian looked away for a second to pick it up, and that was enough for Tabitha to disappear.
Brian ran outside, and thanks to the therapist's guidance, Brian manages to remember a minivan and
the number of its license plate. Afterward, Brian visits Clayton, a coworker of Amy's, to ask him
to run the license plate for clues. Clayton is skeptical, but when Brian expresses worry over
Tabitha's case possibly going cold, Clayton promises to do as much as he can. Meanwhile,
Amy continues to go to the support group led by Tommy. One evening, she shares the story of
Tabitha's dream to become a ballerina. She began taking classes, and she wanted the brown ballet
shoes the girls from Alvin Ailey would wear. Their local store only carried pink though, so Brian
bought a bunch of markers to paint the shoes as many times as needed. The markers are still in the
house and they are one of those details that act as a constant reminder of their missing daughter.
One of the other parents wonders if this means Amy wishes Tabitha was actually dead,
but she denies it and ends her story there. When she leaves the meeting, Amy gets a call from
Clayton telling her that the license plate is a dead end. Amy didn't even know about this and gets
frustrated to learn Brian has been hiding things from her. She gets in her car, ready to leave,
but suddenly, she sees in the mirror the reflection of a girl running behind the car.
Believing her to be Tabitha, Amy follows her into an abandoned building, where she finds
a sleeping tramp next to an old shopping cart. When she looks inside it, she's shocked to find
the head of a dead angel. Later that night, Brian opens the drawer and finds all the markers gone.
Amy explains she's thrown them all away because tonight she's finally accepted that Tabitha's
dead. Brian freaks out, refusing to give up on his daughter and calling out Amy for doing so.
However, Amy's tired of him putting this pressure on her when she's just trying to survive,
which is difficult to do when she sees Tabitha everywhere. Not wanting to hear such hopeless
words from his wife anymore, Brian goes to Tabitha's room to tidy it up again. Then,
his phone rings with a call from a private detective Brian has hired, who tells him the
name and address of the minivan's owner. The next day, Amy has to rush to the police station after
she learns her husband has been arrested. He's been charged with trespassing, because Brian had
gone to the house of the minivan owner to snoop around, causing the neighbors to get scared and
call the police. The fact the license plate was a dead end wasn't a lie, the owner hadn't been
in town when Tabatha disappeared, but it seems Brian is desperate to find someone to blame. Once
Brian is released, Amy tells him Tommy is waiting for them outside because it was he who gave her
a ride and now he'll take them home. As soon as they return to their house, Amy scolds Brian for
snooping around a stranger's house, asking him to let the cops do their jobs. However, Brian thinks
the police don't care about a missing black kid and accuses Amy of doing nothing to help. Hurt,
Amy begins pointing out how Brian keeps drinking himself to sleep and won't go back to work, so
she's the only one providing for the family while he spends a fortune on unopened Christmas gifts.
Then, Amy decides to finally confess she's having an affair with Tommy. Amy asks Brian to fight for
her or he'll lose her with this attitude, but Brian says he can't because if he does,
that means Tabitha is dead. Amy goes to bed alone without a word and Brian decides to go to a bar.
The only open place he ends up finding is a diner with waitress Toni in charge.
Since Brian wants something strong to drink, Toni searches her manager's secret stash and brings out
a bottle of tequila. Noticing Brian is feeling down, Toni offers him to get busy with her, but
Brian turns her down as he shows her his wedding ring. Toni wonders why a married guy is doing
shots alone in a bar at two a.m., and in return, Brian wonders how someone young like Toni became
so jaded. Toni explains she isn't jaded, she is wise, thanks to an epiphany she had last week.
She had been working her shift at the diner and a baby that wouldn't stop crying was driving her
crazy, thus she went outside to have a smoke. That was when she noticed a guy selling illegal
substances across the street, so she decided to ask for something to help her pass the day. His
goods turned out to be pure angel blood; it seemed people have been capturing the angels and selling
out their parts. Toni bought some and gave them a try, shocked by how heightened all her senses
became. She felt like she could see the origins of everything that surrounded her, but the effect
was too strong to handle and Toni ended up going to the bathroom to throw up. When she looked at
herself in the mirror afterward, her mouth was gone and her eyes were black. Even now, Toni
thinks the blood did its job and showed her the truth: she's a monster. Brian says he's a monster
too, so Toni requests to exchange stories. She begins by telling Brian that she goes to support
groups for parents that lost their kids, except that she didn't lose hers, she actually abandoned
her daughter in a burger place. Still, when she tells stories to the groups, she pretends the
child is dead because it makes her feel better. Toni doesn't know where her kid is and she can't
go back to get her because she's been declared "unfit", but even if she could, she doesn't
want to. Brian can't understand how a parent could give up their child like that, then tells Toni the
story of Tabitha's disappearance. He feels guilty because he had promised he'd always watch over
her, yet they took her when he made the mistake of putting his attention on a bunch of coins instead.
After drinking some more tequila, Toni turns on the jukebox and drags Brian to the dance floor.
The two of them have fun together and even come closer for a kiss, but the moment is interrupted
when the music suddenly stops. Toni rushes to the register to grab more coins for the jukebox, but
when she accidentally drops them to the floor, it triggers Brian's trauma and he leaves without even
saying goodbye. On his way home, Brian thinks he sees Tabatha in the middle of the road and follows
her into an alley, where he finds a trail of brown markers that takes him to a trash container.
When he opens it, Brian is shocked to find a wounded angel lying on top of the trash.
Deciding to help, Brian carries the angel in his arms all the way to his house,
where together with Amy, he puts the angel on Tabitha's bed. The pair comforts the angel and
takes care of the wound while discussing their options, Brian mentions the police but Amy refuses
because they would just take the angel away. They agree people are disturbing for selling out angel
parts, and while Brian wonders if heaven is a dark place that god kicked the angels out of,
Amy thinks the angel is here for them. The three of them fall asleep in Tabitha's room and in the
morning, the angel is feeling so much better that it decides to share its blood with them.
It gathers some blood from its wound and puts just a drop on Brian's and Amy's tongues,
which is still enough to make them trip. It seems the angel blood accelerates the process of grief,
and the couple begins going through the different stages in minutes. Brian admits he doesn't know
who he is without his daughter and Amy finally gets tired of the smelly tree, so she pushes
it down and begins throwing the gifts around. Then, Brian has a breakdown on the floor only for
seconds later to ask Amy if Tommy had been a good affair. When Amy says yes, Brian leaves the house
and goes all the way to the support group to punch Tommy. When he returns, Amy's smiling because he's
finally fighting for her and she helps him bandage his hand. The couple begins reminiscing about the
night at the movies where they went from friends to lovers and suddenly they kiss, finally feeling
connected again. They begin getting busy in the middle of the living room and soon the
angel comes over to watch them and let his blood rain all over them from his neck. A bright light
surrounds the couple and once they've finished, Brian and Amy open their eyes to find themselves
inside a theater. On the stage, Tabitha finally performs her dance for them as a final goodbye.