Movie Review: Monsternado (2023)

Synopsis: A shift in the Earth's magnetic field results in a massive tornado approaching the American East Coast from the Bermuda Triangle. If the storm itself isn't damaging enough, the tornado contains a variety of prehistoric creatures ranging from giant alligators to pterodactyls. 

Who's in it? The movie stars Derek Miller, Chloe Karr, Jase Rivers, May Kelly and Danielle Scott.

Review: I came across Monsternado on Amazon Prime a couple days ago and while the title didn't exactly instill confidence in me as far as the film was concerned, my wife and I did enjoy the campiness of the Sharknado films and decided to give it a try. Yeah, that proved to be a mistake.

Where should I begin? I guess, first off, there are low budget films, then there are films that are so low budget, they don't even bother to hide the fact they are filmed in a foreign country when they are supposed to take place in the United States. I'm not exactly sure which American city this was supposed to be taking place in, but it was the most London-looking American city ever. The cars even drove on the left side of the road.

Even if I were to ignore that and the crappy CGI special effects, the premise itself is just bizarre and really doesn't work. The "science" used to explain the monsternado was vague and a bit wonky and I'm still confused about the plan to stop the events from happening (other than the military had to be involved). I'm even more confused about where the pterodactyls came from. I could understand a tornado picking up prehistoric oceanic creatures but was I supposed to believe the pterodactyls have been hiding under the water for millions of years? Why not just throw in a T-rex while you're at it.

Because of the weak plot, this movie needed the cast to hit a homerun as far as their characters were concerned. Unfortunately, it fell short of doing that. Part of the problem, I think, was the main protagonist, Matt (Miller) wasn't overly likable and seemed much more insane than intelligent while the others, when not falling completely flat, weren't given enough time to establish their personalities. You don't need to bog the movie down with backstories, but you do at least need to give the audience a reason to care if the person survives. Either that, or you need to make them funny, something the movie also failed to do.

Final Opinion: This movie was clearly trying to recreate the success of the Sharknado films. However, adding more monsters isn't always better, especially when the movie's plot and cast aren't strong enough to support it. As a result, this movie just isn't worth wasting your time on unless you're into total trainwrecks.

My Grade: F