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, cut-rate 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-bad-it’s-good, 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.

Stay Out of THE BASEMENT

THE BASEMENT (Blu-ray)

2018 / 88 min

From Uncork’d Entertainment

Available at www.MovieZyng.com

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat

The Basement is essentially torture porn, and like The Passion of the Christ, nearly the entire film consists of extreme torment being inflicted on one guy. The only real difference is one purports to be a horror movie, while the other is considered required viewing for some Christians (though I’m still not sure how watching Jesus in agony for two hours brings them closer to him). 

I don’t think I’d consider The Basement to be horror, either. Sadism for its own sake isn’t horror. Even the film that came to define torture porn for modern audiences (Hostel) managed to instill enough atmospheric dread to qualify as horror. But here, we’re mostly just curious about what awful thing its main character endures next, and how convincing the make-up effects are.

The victim is Craig Owen (Cayleb Long), a famous musician who’s running an errand for his wife, Kelly (Mischa Barton), when he’s abducted by a serial killer known as The Gemini (Jackson Davis). Craig is bound to a school desk in a dank basement while his captor repeatedly adopts different personalities and guises, each who address him as Bill (The Gemini’s actual name). Some of these personalities condemn “Bill” for his murders, others assault him gruesomely and graphically.

Extreme detention.

But while the make-up effects are indeed pretty convincing, the film isn’t scary or suspenseful. It’s relentlessly talky between torture scenes and serves up a protagonist who isn't interesting or engaging enough to invest in…just a rich guy cheating on his wife. Speaking of which, at least a third of the narrative focuses on Kelly, who laments that Craig hasn’t come home but never appears worried something bad has happened to him. That, coupled with the dull chats she has with her bestie, Bianca, pretty much telegraphs the twist ending writer-directors Brian M. Conley & Nathan Ives are obviously proud of.

The performances are mostly perfunctory, save for Davis, who’s admittedly impressive adopting all those different personas (12 of them, to be exact). Other than that, The Basement is a movie that’s far more in love with its torture sequences and predictable denouement than creating anything resembling true horror.

EXTRA KIBBLES

ALTERNATE OPENING - With a bonus several head for your troubles.

MUSIC VIDEO