Because her father (Vincent Ventresca) doesn't have the time for Joan
(Maika Monroe) she deserves and even misses her graduation celebration, he
buys her a cute little monkey to make up - and it works, Joan falls in
love with the monkey on the spot. Of course, the one fact she does not
know about the monkey is that it grows wings each night, grows to
man-size, and flies around town killing people. The little beast grows
fond of Joan, too, so he sees competition in her boyfriend (Zac Waggener),
and one night goes to kill him, incidently catching him in bed with
another woman, the sheriff's (Michael Papajohn) daughter (Jackie Tuttle).
This of course gets the sheriff on the wrong foot, and from now on he
swears to kill who- or whatever killed his girl. Eventually, Joan
witnesses her monkey transform into a flying monster, follows him around
town and witnesses him slaughtering people. When she tells the sheriff
about it, he sort of believes her, as as wild as it sounds, it would make
sense in his daughter's murder. Soon he witnesses the flying monkey first
hand, too, and kills him. But instead of just staying dead, he comes back
... but as two monkeys. Thing is, the flying monster is a mythical
monster from China, where a couple of hunters have set out to kill them
all once and for all, and they can only be killed by their sacred weapons.
When they learn from a couple of poachers that the last flying monkey was
sold to the USA, they travel over there, and with the help of a crooked
animal dealer (Christopher Matthew Cook) they are able to track down the
flying monkeys, as they're about to attack the sheriff and Joan's dad. But
to kill them all, the original monkey has to be killed, and thus, Joan,
the only person the monkey ever has been attached to, has to serve as bait
- something which almost gets her and her dad killed, but eventually, they
manage to kill the beast and come closer together as father and daughter. Electra
Avellan plays Joan's best friend, but serves as little more than
eye-candy. The premise of Flying Monkey is of course a
fun one, and setting the movie in Kansas does prove some spirit ... but
the movie as a whole simply isn't that great: It's too formulaic, lacks
atmosphere in a few too many places, the monsters simply don't look creepy
enough, the directorial effort as a whole feels a little on the impersonal
side, and the film quite simply takes itself way too seriously for its fun
subject matter. All of this doesn't make the film a train wreck, it's
pretty much an ok watch, actually - and that's the problem, it's ok and
doesn't aim for more, and while there's a myriad of worse monsterflicks
than this one out there, quite a few are a lot funnier despite everything,
and there are most certainly a myriad better films of the same ilk
out there that prove there is a right way (actually, many right ways) to
do this. The movie does carry a rather likeable anti-gun message though.
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