I’m not quite sure where to begin with Sky Monster. It should be in the “So Bad It’s Good” category but instead it’s in the “So Bad It’s Really Bad” category.
It’s not that it suffers from bad acting which is good under the circumstances, and it’s not that the special effects let it down, which on an (I assume) extremely low production budget are more than passable, it’s just that there’s really nothing in writer Tom Jolliffe’s (Firenado, Mega lightning, Jurassic Island) script that’s novel, surprising or remotely entertaining. It’s just a series of clichés loosely strung together and the monster reveal isn’t even a reveal as we see it in the first minute of the film (and it’s all over the trailer as well).
With that being said, I can see what they tried to do – think Snakes On A Plane or Ants On A Plane (yes, that’s a real movie also known as Destination: Infestation – let me know if you want a review) but with a mother-fudging Kraken as the deadly force – but there’s no knowing nod and a wink with this film and because of that you really need to feel the tension and that’s just not there.
Anyway, enough of my moaning, let’s get on with the actual review.
What’s Sky Monster About?
It’s about a monster in the sky, Duh!
It’s Cindy’s 21st birthday and so her Dad, Mike (Ryan Davies – Murder In The Car Park, Da Vinci’s Demons), has arranged the birthday of a lifetime – a trip in a private jet to a Caribbean Island where Cindy (Betsy-Blue English – Which is Witch, Four Weddings And A Funeral (Mini series)) and her friends can party as much as they want.
Mike and Cindy drive a totally not British model of right-hand drive car on a totally not British drive-on-the-left road to a totally not disused runway to a totally not UK registered plane (I checked, it’s owned by the RAF) with a Union Flag on the tail despite the majority of the cast attempting an American accent (more on that later).
After seeing the girls board the plane, Mike makes his way to the airport tower because all Dads are air traffic controllers in their spare time, don’t you know anything?
As the plane takes off, slightly sleazy flight attendant Vince (Jack Ilco – “Lonely, Dark, and Deep“, Honey Trap) drools over the girls who seem to get more scantily clad by the minute.
The plane is heading towards a storm which apparently the pilot cannot avoid as he’ll “steer into another flightpath” because up and down do not exist in this movie.
The pilot, Roland (Matthew Baunsgard – The Loch Ness Horror, Curse of Humpty Dumpty 2), tells the tower (because the tower at the airport they took off from is controlling them for a whole 6 hour flight because that’s how aviation works, okay?) he thinks the storm looks mild and they should be okay flying through it. Oh, Roland! If only you knew!
The girls begin to party but are interrupted when the storm begins to get worse. Unbeknownst to them, turbulence is the least of their worries as a giant creature engulfs the plane and begins to terrorise the passengers and crew inside.
Will they be able to reach their destination or will they become Kraken fodder?
The Good
As I mentioned earlier, given the script the cast has to work with they do very well, most notably Sarah T. Cohen (Curse of Humpty Dumpty 2, Crocodile Vengeance) who plays Cindy’s best friend Becca. She’s extremely relatable and likeable as a shy girl surrounded by hot blondes, she gets air sick and a bit panicky when flying – she really picked the wrong flight here!
And given that the whole movie is essentially set inside an aircraft cabin, the directors (Aaron Winsal, Rhys Frake-Waterfield and Tyler-James) do well with the limited scope for set movement and shot setup.
The editing (also by Aaron Winsal) is brisque and keeps the pace moving although at only 1 hour 15 minutes, there’s not a lot of pace needed to be chopped off in order to get all of the plot points in.
The Bad
Firstly, let’s start with the accents. No one can make up their mind if they’re American or English: their accents sometimes disappear mid-sentence only to reappear later. Some characters don’t even attempt an American accent but nothing is made of them being English – no explanation that they’re all in the same fraternity at an American college for example – so why not let everyone use their actual accent instead of it being all over the place like some bad impression of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins?
Secondly, the plot.
There isn’t one.
It’s literally hot girls get on plane. Bad storm, bikinis, monster. That’s it.
We don’t know if we like most of the characters, we don’t know if any of them are right bitches so need to be cheered when they die – we don’t care about them at all.
The story could have devoted an extra 20 minutes at the start of the film showing the girls together so we get a sense of who they are but instead they’re just bits of totty thrown on screen to be ogled at by the (presumably predominantly) male audience.
The Ugly
As I mentioned in my No Way Up review, I am a big fan of air crash investigations and air disasters. Now while I can’t recall an episode of Mayday being explicitly devoted to a giant squid like creature attaching itself to a small passenger jet, I do recall that pilots who are entering weather systems have the ability to go up and down in their planes so they can fly over or under the storm system.
The whole premise of the film is that the plane can’t deviate from the course because it will intersect “another flightpath”, well I guess Cindy’s Dad moonlighting as an Air Traffic Controller was an extremely terrible hobby for him as he doesn’t seem to understand 2 planes can be on the same flightpath as long as they maintain vertical separation.
But what do I know? I only lasted 15 minutes in FlightGear before crashing into a swamp – lucky for us though it’s that age old cliché of a passenger being able to fly! And of course it’s Cindy! She can’t go up and down either but can somehow barrel roll so there’s that little aviation gem.
And don’t even get me started with the fact that the doors are open and they’re supposedly at 35,000 feet BECAUSE NO ONE CAN MAKE THE PLANE GO DOWN.
And don’t even EVEN get me started on there being a gun on board THAT IS USED.
ON A SKY KRAKEN.
Ahem! Sorry. Rant over
I won’t even go into the ending… because it’s obvious they didn’t know how to finish the film so they just did what they did…. which was certainly a choice.
Final Thoughts
This film is ridiculous.
No thought went into any aspect of it at all; It’s just a way to shoehorn bikini clad girls and monster together but let’s set it on a plane instead of a beach to make it different I guess?
And I am sure the film having 3 directors had nothing AT ALL to do with the fact the cast is predominately gorgeous women who would be on set wearing next-to-nothing…. I’m sure that wasn’t it, right?
Because having a one set, one/two camera production on a film that’s under 80 minutes long is definitely so demanding that it would require the attention of THREE GROWN ARSE MEN.
I’m not 100% knocking this film because the women do a good job of trying to dig it out of the massive hole that the writer put them in but I can’t in good conscience recommend a film that’s so obviously there for tits and ass it’s almost an embarrassment.
I’ll have to do a proper article on the Male Gaze (this Wikipedia article will have to do for now) but this film checks all the boxes: The male gaze from behind the camera, the leery male flight attendant character and the male audience watching at home.
Considering this film was made in 2023 and not 1973 shows how little cinema has moved on, despite what the empowerment of #MeToo tried to do.
Watch this film if you don’t mind overt sexism in film thinly disguised as “feminine empowerment” or if you can ignore that and want something silly to put on in the background for an hour that requires no thought whatsoever.
Don’t watch this film if you understand the concept of airspace being three-dimensional which means objects can travel up and down as well as going forward at the same time.
Watch the full film on the “Midnight Screening” YouTube Channel here on Tubi, or check availability in your region on JustWatch.
