Flying Monkeys

The CGI creature was enough to let me know I'd be wasting my time if I sat through any more.

Attempting to make up for his continual absence, a man's purchase of a monkey for his daughter turns out to be a form of demonic monkey-creature that begins terrorizing the townspeople and must band together with a group of hunters to take the creatures down.

This turned out to be a solid, middle-of-the-road offering that had some rather fun stuff about it. One of the better elements here is the fact that the opening shock jump doesn't kill off everyone it comes in contact with, which is a pleasant surprise as well as the film's origin story for the creatures which is far better than expected and definitely has some good elements for later use coming out of it. As well, we've got a couple fine action moments with the multitude of creatures swarming over their victims in town at several big scenes, and the finale at the house is quite exciting. This is still plagued with the usual Sci-Fi Channel atrocious CGI and gore, but as well there's another flaw in the treatment of the guardians' search for the creature who seem shoehorned into the story without really doing much and their quest at starting at the front of the chain of possession halfway through the movie doesn't make much sense. Overall, this one wasn't all that terrible though.

Rated R: Violence, Language and Brief Nudity.

Leaving a serious review for this film is what a stupid person would do. It's cheese. It's fun. But you gotta be into that sort of thing. If your not just don't watch or review it.

Why do I watch Syfy movies? Simple: I long for the days of Creature Feature and Chiller Theater. Okay, so not much today comes close to "The Killer Shrews." I am also not the first to point that most current CGI does not improve on Ray Harryhausen. That said, there a few Syfy films worth watching. "Sabretooth" is not bad; "Rise of the Zombies" is a pleasant surprise (and way better than Steve Niles "Remains"); the best to my mind, is "Abominable." Now this film about flying monkeys with big appetites actually has a few things going for it. 1) Not a typically predictable plot--after a girl receives a pet that is not what it seems to be; (2)Two Asian ass-kickers who bring the right combination of seriousness and humor; (3) Likable characters--not generic monster food, and; (4)scary monsters. No need to make these flying monkeys Cloverfield-size--this is one film where the CGI works. Better in every way than the useless "Tasmanian Devils." 6/10

I'll be honest in saying that I was expecting to hate Flying Monkeys, as with a few exceptions SyFy's movies are terrible. Flying Monkeys is not a great movie, far from it in my view, but you can do with far worse. Admittedly, the dialogue flows poorly and reeks of cheese, the gore is very artificial-looking and trivialises the attacks rather than adding to them and the demon hunters and their subplot felt shoehorned in and like it was just padding out the running time. There also for me seemed to be too much emphasis on anti-gun control, I liked that there was a commentary but at the end of the day it felt overstated. However, while nothing particularly is top-drawer in Flying Monkeys there were assets that did seem better done here than in other SyFy movies.

The movie is shot and edited reasonably competently, and while the CGI effects are not going to win any awards and look a little goofy they are proportioned quite well and at least they don't look like they only took five-ten minutes to make. The attacks are quite nail-biting and inventive, more so than usual actually, and the finale is exciting. The father-daughter relationship is something we have seen many times, but was quite touching here. The story of course is weird with the feel of two or more stories rolled into one, also ones that together don't particularly mesh well so the movie did feel muddled at times, but it is not too predictable and it didn't ever bore me. The music and sound effects fit with the atmosphere quite nicely and don't overbear the drama.

We've seen these type of characters before, but while not all were necessary they weren't annoying. Even Wang had his moments. And who cannot love Skippy, he is very cute though he is equally convincing as a demonic monkey. The direction shows a director with more experience in this genre and one who knows how to keep things moving without it getting too overly-serious or overly-comical. The acting is better than average, Maika Monroe and Vincent Ventresca especially were quite good. Overall, weird but quite entertaining. A great movie it isn't, but I- and coming from someone who dislikes most of SyFy's output intensely - cannot bring myself to hate it. 6/10 Bethany Cox