YMMV / Love and Monsters

• Complete Monster: Captain "Cap" Brooks Wilkinson, the leader of a trio of scavengers, hides his callous personality behind a front of friendly civility. Visiting colonies, Cap manipulates them into thinking that he's providing them a new life out in the world whereas in fact he's only after their supplies. Having captured a giant mutated crab and keeping it under constant abuse via Electric Torture, Cap has it devour the settlement's inhabitants once he's done stealing their loot. Drugging the people of Settlement 3022, a colony of mostly elders, Cap has them tied up to be devoured alive by the crab—also ordering one of his subordinates to shoot at Joel's dog when the latter tries to hinder his plans.
• Fanfic Fuel: The film's setting alone provides plenty to work with.
  • What're the other regions of the country like in this post-apocalyptic state? Not to mention countries beyond the US. How're the people there dealing with the new status quo?
  • For every mutated, killer abomination we see onscreen two or three more are simply mentioned, Clyde and Minnow name-dropping several they've had unpleasant run ins with.
  • Are the world's governments truly gone? Perhaps they too are hiding within bunkers, endeavoring to slowly build up their own communities.
  • The fact multiple, broken down Mav1s units exist opens up the possibility someone with the technical know how is gathering them up and repairing them.
• Fridge Brilliance: Why do Joel's bunkmates treat him as The Baby of the Bunch? Because when they first came across him, he was standing in shock, having just seen his parents die mere feet front of him. As far as they knew, he was a scared kid who had no idea what to do. He was also 17, so to them, he pretty much was a baby.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Clyde and Minnow are two surface wanderers who have lost everyone they care about. However, they have each other for company and are able to survive in a world that wants to kill them.
  • Joel is the only one in his bunker without a romantic companion, no one respects him, his inexperience nearly gets him killed multiple times, and he learns that his girlfriend has moved on. However, he gains the respect of his bunkmates by surviving 14 days on the surface, Aimee is willing to rekindle their relationship (just not immediately), and he gets a pet dog.
• Moral Event Horizon: When Cap sets his crab monster on the elderly survivors alongside Joel and Aimee. The fact that he has no sympathy towards people who need to be cared for is the cincher when it comes to how cruel and selfish he is.
• Squick: One of the leeches that attaches itself to Joel pukes a pinkish fluid upon being removed.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: While the Crab Monster looks just as cool as the rest, its human like eyes come off as creepy.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The mutated creatures. They're played by a mixture of puppetry, animatronics, and well-done CGI that only occasionally looks conspicuous, and every scene with them is a feast for the eyes. The effects were so good that it earned the film an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects.
• The Woobie:
  • The Crab Monster is a Gentle Giant subject to Electric Torture courtesy of the Big Bad.
  • Every human character (with the exception of Cap and his Hench people) is this, due to suffering tremendous losses and being forced to live in bunkers.
  • Boy and Mav1s. The former is a dog who lost his human in the apocalypse and is living by himself in a bus. The latter is a robot rendered obsolete by the apocalypse, and by the time Joel finds her, she has less than an hour of power left.