Sky Monster

Sometimes all you have to do is read the title of a film, and you know it's going to be bad.

This is one of those films.

They seemed to have sourced the majority of the cast from onlyfans.

And did the effects on their laptop.

Because it sucks pretty hard.

If you are going to do that...all I ask is that you pay attention to the details.

Because, at one point they were flying through a storm...but the sun was still shining into the cabin from the outside like everything was hunky dory.

Logical consistency aside...it's about what I expected: complete trash that should have been a porn.

Thankfully...it's pretty short...and based on a patently ridiculous concept: a private jet, carrying a girl and her friends on her 22nd birthday, find themselves trapped in the Bermuda Triangle, inside a plane that is being attacked by a sky kraken.

So...not exactly something that is based on a stroke of brilliance.

It might be based on a different kind of stroke, though (if you catch my drift).

When it comes down to it, the whole thing amounts to a combination of Snakes On A Plane and Monsters...if you took the worst aspects of both those films, and mashed them together.

At least it has a couple hot, scantily clad, young women, though.

Because without them...there wouldn't be any reason to watch this at all.

Not that there really is, anyway.

2 out of 10.

This is a very low budget film that you certainly do not want to expend any energy thinking about. The monster is interesting, although what are likely practical effects in scenes are done very poorly. Cindy is celebrating her 21st birthday, and her father has gotten her and some friends, who are all 22, a trip to a resort where they can spend three days on the beaches before returning. As they get on the plane, they are told to relax, as what could go wrong? And it seems clear weather ahead, until they get into clouds and storms, that the pilot cannot get out from. It is in the Bermuda Triangle. Their plane gets rocked, but it can't be turbulence, as turbulence does not have tentacles. On the plane is a hunk of a flight attendant who gets lots of attention from the passengers, and he has pills that are a combination of Valium and mushrooms. On take off, the pilot talks to the tower and passengers, all without a headset or microphone. And being in a harness also seems optional at times. The movie is low quality, silly at times, but still interesting enough to want to see how it will end.

I have to admit that I harbored zero expectations to this 2023 horror movie titled "Sky Monster". Why? Well, the low 2.5 IMDb rating was a warning sign. But I still opted to watch the movie, as I hadn't already seen it, plus it appeared to have a Lovecraftian feel to it.

Writer Tom Jolliffe didn't exactly pen down an overly impressive script. The narrative was pretty straightforward and simplistic, I will say that, but it just made very little sense. But the story was actually campy enough to prove entertaining for a single viewing.

The only familiar faces on the screen was Chrissie Wunna. I will say that the acting performances in the movie were, for the most parts, actually fair.

The special effects in the movie were exactly that; special. And not in a good way. The CGI animated speciel effects were a very mixed bag of nuts; some times they looked fair, while other times they were laughable to look at, especially during the scenes where the CGI tentacles were interacting with the cast.

Now that've watched "Sky Monster", I can check it off of my watched movie list. But I know that this is not a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time.

The best thing about "Sky Monster" was the unforeseen ending. I liked that.

My rating of directors Aaron Winsal, Rhys Frake-Waterfield and Tyler-James's 2023 movie "Sky Monster" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

This movie is supposed to take place in Miami, but as someone who lives here, nothing about it feels authentic-nothing looks like Miami. Plus, Florida is so close to the islands that a 6-hour trip makes no sense. The writing feels awkward and forced, and for a group of "wild" 21-year-old girls, they all look older and worn out. Thirty minutes in, and I'm already rooting for the monster to end it so the movie is over.

Why do these films always rely on the same clichés: sex and monsters? It seems like writers and directors aren't interested in originality anymore. Similar movies from the '80s had more creativity. This one is just boring. Sex doesn't sell if there's no substance.

A father arranges a charter flight for four friends to help his daughter celebrate what must be her tenth annual 21st birthday. The charter is crewed by a pilot and horny flight attendant. The plane takes off, has a sky monster encounter, and eventually the movie ends. The bulk of the movie takes place in one room decorated to resemble an airplane cabin.

The five woman board the plane in full horror movie party mode. They attempt to seduce the flight attendant, take random drugs, and dress up in bikinis because this is a horror movie and that's what people do in horror movies.

The festivities take a turn for the worse when the plane is sucked into the Bermuda Triangle, enveloped in a thunderstorm, and used as a combination surfboard and buffet by a tentacled monster. It's all downhill (pun intended) when the only pilot onboard involuntarily exits the plane intact through a half-inch hole in the ceiling. The birthday girl assumes the controls and... no spoilers here.

No one thing stands out as worse than another: this movie is consistently uniformly bad in every regard. That's rare because usually someone involved in even the worst productions has a modicum of talent or ability. Not so here. While no worse than anything else, perhaps most memorable aspect of the movie is the unique "nasal cam". Virtually every scene is shot from below, as if the camera operator was too wasted to stand or was a small dog with a GoPro glued to its head. Particularly disturbing were the extreme closeups that consumed fifty percent of the runtime, suggesting this was originally intended as an ENT medical school training film.

As with every other aspect of this film, the less said about the acting the better. Though in fairness the pilot's laughably inappropriate suggestive eye-wags were good for a chuckle. The special effects were Asylum Films grade; nothing more needs to be said. The script may have been written by AI trained exclusively on one star horror movies.

Three stars because I watched it to the end.