You need to see Monsters to understand Monsters: Dark Continent, but if you liked Monsters, you shouldn’t feel compelled even if you’re a completist to watch Monsters: Dark Continent. In Monsters, the metaphor was about coexisting instead of being hostile to each other, but in Monsters: Dark Continent, the metaphor asks who the real monsters are in the conflict. Monsters: Dark Continent is Redacted meets Cloverfield.
Whoever made Monsters: Dark Continent saw Monsters and thought, “I’d love to know more about the soldiers. We don’t see them enough.” I know that many soldiers enroll because of lack of opportunities back home, and many soldiers become plagued with PTSD and exhibit violent behavior, but not all people are continuously unlikeable before and after enlisting. There was not one likable, but flawed individual in the entire group. The soldiers were a bunch of sex-crazed, priority-challenged, violent thoughtless jerks who were barely distinguishable from each other, and only one unremarkable member of the group gets on the path to redemption in an awe-inspiring encounter in the desert, which may or may not be believable considering how everyone acted before. I’ll be charitable and say that it was believable because it was the most enjoyable part of Monsters: Dark Continent.

SPOILER

Another reason not to see Monsters: Dark Continent: instead of dog fighting, a dog is forced to fight a baby alien, which is unfortunately what humans would probably do to aliens, but it is just one of many, probably intentionally disheartening, deliberate and realistic moments. Monsters: Dark Continent did not need to be two hours and hit that note repeatedly. Monsters: Dark Continent needed a less indulgent and repetitive editor. If it had just showed that fight, done a better job of distinguishing the characters as reprehensible individuals before they all ended up dead or not had so many characters and just focused on the two that were important, maybe Monsters: Dark Continent would be worth watching, but it isn’t.