MONSTER ON A PLANE: Cancel This Flight

MONSTER ON A PLANE (Blu-ray)

2024 / 90 min

Uncork’d Entertainment

Available at MovieZyng

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat😾

Hoping for a little cheap, trashy fun in the sky? Look elsewhere. While I periodically enjoy a bit of exploitative junk as much as the next guy, Monster on a Plane mostly fails to even reach those lowly standards. 

Ironically, overall cheapness isn’t the movie’s problem. In fact, it dutifully includes plenty of the gratuitous sex & nudity, splatter & gore, cheap CGI and phony monsters that have made similar films a lot of shameless fun. And of course, it’s got the usual silly story and overwrought performances, capped off by the prerequisite title that explains the plot in a nutshell.

However, this one doesn’t even rise to the level of so-good-it’s-bad, for a couple of key reasons. First off, the dialogue is not only terrible (hell, that can be forgiven, even embraced), there are numerous distracting occasions when it doesn’t even make sense…and I’m talking grammatical sense. Monster on a Plane is a German production but filmed in English, and if I didn't know better, I’d say the script was originally written in German before being fed through Google Translate and handed to the cast. Some of it even sounds like it was clumsily written by AI (as a former teacher, I’ve seen many examples of AI’s butchery of the English language). Here’s just one stellar example:

Man: You know who I love more than you? Your tiny boobs.

Woman: You idiot. My boobs belong to me.

This little fellow is in charge of guarding the script.

The entire cast delivers their lines as if they aren’t always exactly sure what they’re actually saying, their efforts to recite everything verbatim coming across as a struggle. Elsewhere, I found myself wondering if “writer”-director Ezra Tsegaye has ever been on a plane (or if he knows how they work). Not only is the cockpit free of any steering control wheels, the cargo hold (where much of the slaughter takes place) is the size of a small warehouse. Then there’s the creature itself, which so-closely resembles the little Krites in Critters that someone should consider suing. 

It also seems to have been edited with a chainsaw…most scenes sloppily slapped together, often with little or no transition. If a bonkers German creature feature is what you seek, might I humbly suggest something like Sky Sharks? At least that one feels like the work of professional schlockmeisters. The only vibe Monster on a Plane gives off is contempt for the expectations of its audience.